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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | India's Handloom Challenge Anatomy of a Crisis -Ashoke Chatterjee

India's Handloom Challenge Anatomy of a Crisis -Ashoke Chatterjee

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published Published on Aug 9, 2015   modified Modified on Aug 9, 2015
-Economic and Political Weekly

The Indian weaver is dismissed in high places as an embarrassing anachronism, despite demand for his or her skills and products. In the new millennium, globalisation and a mindless acquiescence to imported notions of a good life threaten to take over, even as the West looks East for better concepts of sustainable living. Analysing today's crisis in the handloom sector, plagued by low-cost imitations from power looms, this article points out that we are caught in a meaningless dichotomy that could damage Indian handloom's unique reputation of coming from a system unmatched for delivering genuine sustainability.

Ashoke Chatterjee (ashchat@prabhatedu.org) is a former Director of the National Institute of Design and former President of the Crafts Council of India.

India’s transition from colonial rule was marked by a confident belief in the relevance of its heritage in the move towards modernity. The capacity to define progress in Indian terms was epitomised by the handloom revolution. Rooted in the freedom struggle, it was later directed through planning for livelihood and lifestyle opportunities enriched by inherited values. Emerging as one of the 20th century’s great design stories, Indian fabrics became symbolic of Mahatma Gandhi’s injunction to keep Indian windows open to the world without being swept away by gusts of wind from outside.

Seventy years later, the Indian weaver is dismissed in high places as an embarrassing anachronism, despite demand for his or her skills and products. In the new millennium, globalisation can seem less an open window than a consumerist culture of mimicry. A mindless acquiescence to imported notions of a good life threatens to take over, even as advanced economies look East for better concepts of sustainable living. This is the context for today’s crisis in the handloom sector. It deserves understanding, symptomatic as it may be of a deeper malaise.

Past Forward

Symbolic of its civilisation, the loom in India represent’s a heritage unbroken through thousands of years. The loom became Gandhi’s catalyst for freedom, and emerged through six decades of planned development as the nation’s largest source of livelihood after agriculture. Today, the Indian loom in several incarnations—handloom, power loom and mill production—represents a huge industry, within which handlooms provide the most jobs—more than four million by conservative estimates and up to 20 million by others.

Media attention has been directed in the few past months to the struggles of handloom weavers in several states to resist the encroachment of power looms. Power looms dominate India’s textile production, providing some 60% of output. Handlooms follow with 15%, although with a much larger employment quotient. Knitwear, mills and khadi make up the rest. The ministry of textiles has, through the Five Year Plans, set development directions for all sectors other than khadi. Perhaps, the most iconic Indian textile of all, khadi is governed by the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC), which reports to another ministry. Instead of each component being encouraged to flourish in its own right, handlooms and power looms have been locked in a wasteful battle that thwarts the entire industry.

The current crisis reflects efforts by power loom operators, backed by an influential lobby, to redefine handloom technology and revise the Handloom Reservation Act, 1985 (HRA). Despite their numbers, dispersed and disempowered handloom weavers cannot match the power loom operators’ political clout. The consequence is a hugely unequal battle, with implications well beyond the economic. What many consider “the fabric of the future” is undervalued in a policy approach that limits it to a restricted niche of export markets, high-end boutiques, and museum collections. A crisis of lost opportunity thus threatens India’s unique advantage as the world’s only major source of handwoven fabrics, which are strongly demanded in expanding markets, both home and overseas.

A Crisis of Definition

Some 30 years ago Shyam Benegal’s film Susman portrayed the pressures that were already affecting one of India’s renowned centres of weaving, Pochampally village, a short drive from Hyderabad. Weaver Ramalu (Om Puri) and his wife Gouramma (Shabana Azmi) are challenged by traders, cooperative societies, touts and other market forces over which they have little control. The clatter of encroaching power looms can be clearly heard. In May 2015, an NDTV crew visited Pochampally to report on the current crisis. Little had changed for the Ramalus and Gourammas of today. This despite growing demand and a new symbol of globalised status—a Geographical Indicator intended to protect the exclusive identity of Pochampally’s famous ikat sarees.

Two years before Susman was released, the HRA listed 22 items to be reserved for weavers in the face of rising competition from power looms. This façade was intended to protect a range of handwoven products, including sarees, dhotis, and lungis identified for excellence in a particular craft. At the time, India’s handloom heritage was proving a diplomatic advantage, celebrated at festivals of India taken around the world by the late Pupul Jayakar. Meanwhile, power looms invaded not just Pochampally but every centre of the weaving craft, from Maharashtra to Madhya Pradesh, Varanasi to Phulia. The threat to weavers was not just cheaper cloth but power loom rip-offs of handloom designs, which flooded the market with cheap fakes. Within a decade, the power loom lobby’s growing clout reduced items reserved under the HRA from 22 to 11, and its enforcement to almost zero.

Surprisingly, the HRA originated in colonial times to protect the skills of Indian weavers. Its future in the 21st century market was to be the focus of a seminar arranged in New Delhi by Dastkar Andhra and the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in March 2015. Despite an invitation, no one from the ministry of textiles attended. Power loom lobby influences were suspected to be at work. The empty chairs were reminders of an upheaval two years earlier. In 2013, taking advantage of the election fever, power loom interests lobbied hard for a change in the definition of the handloom to legitimise their production as handmade. This was to be speeded through ministry intervention to encourage the attachment of 0.5 horsepower (hp) motors to handlooms, transforming “hand”looms instantly to power looms. Months of turbulent opposition followed to defend the heritage loom, led by weavers and craft activists. Morchas, satyagrahas and conclaves built pressure. By January 2014, the ministry as well as the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) offered assurances that there would be no change in either the handloom definition or technology. Yet just a year later, the sector seemed to be heading back to a division.

In a free-market era that acknowledges the consumer as queen and is hostile to restrictions, the HRA may appear an anachronistic anchor for an industry that regards itself as futuristic. Yet, it is the clarity of its definition of handloom that gives it power—a handloom is defined as any loom other than a power loom, and a power loom as a loom worked by power, as defined under the Factories Act 1948. Shyama Sundari of Dastakar Andhra knows what she is up against.

I can understand the mixed responses to our insistence on reservations. But the field reality cannot be ignored. The existence of the HRA is a deterrent to the proliferation of power loom imitations. It is the sole remaining instrument that defines handloom. It is ironic that we need to hold on to a definition of handloom to ensure its survival, just as definition still protects an adivasi’s rights to exist.

Civilisational aspects, compounding the irony of a legal straw to which a priceless Indian asset must cling, are reminders of Gandhi’s “open window.”

A Sector Seeks Definition

Current controversies have early roots. Weaver suicides in Andhra Pradesh (AP) alone were 1,000 between 2002 and 2012. In 2011, the Planning Commission recommended a review of the handloom definition to improve sector “viability.” By August 2012, a committee had introduced the concept of a hybrid loom. Entirely new to global experience, in coming years this attempted innovation bedevilled handloom weavers and stimulated power loom ambitions. A handloom redefined as a hybrid would require just one process of weaving to be done by manual intervention or human energy. “Modernisation” to reduce drudgery and improve productivity was put out as the noble objective of such reform. Weavers identified it as a conspiracy to kill their tradition at one stroke by removing India’s global unique selling proposition (USP) that distinguishes handcrafted textiles from others. By December 2012, hundreds of strikes by weavers were reported.

Yet, in May 2013, an official subcommittee (with power loom and state representatives) again suggested the need to relax the HRA definition of a handloom. By August and September 2013 reports continued on guidelines for “modernisation and mechanisation” so as to “upgrade/improve production processes and reduce drudgery.” These sparked another wave of weaver protests in Madhya Pradesh (MP), Odisha, AP, Karnataka and West Bengal. Responding to these alarms, the Planning Commission organised a stakeholder meeting in October 2013 to reassess India’s handloom status. It quickly rejected the notion of a hybrid loom and of power looms encouraged at the cost of handlooms, underlining that the Ministry of Textiles’ own national network of weavers’ service centres have not been consulted for such a fundamental change. Experts Devaki Jain and Ritu Sethi pointed to the absurdity of mechanisation when energy failures were affecting power loom production. The critical constraint on handloom production was shortage of yarn, not power or demand.

A delegation carried these concerns to the PMO in January 2014. It was assured of no change in the handloom definition. Instead, a new textile policy would be formulated, which would “subsume” the handloom sector policy. A further response from the Office of the Development Commissioner (Handicrafts) arrived on 14 January 2014—the handloom definition would “remain in the purest form,” accepting the recommendation of a subcommittee of the 2013 advisory committee. This decision, the statement added, overturned earlier recommendations that had been supported by a parliamentary standing committee on labour.

In May 2014, Varanasi, the new prime minister’s constituency, brought the handloom sector unprecedented political attention. Yet, protests were erupting elsewhere. In Kashmir, mechanisation was threatening 5,00,000 Pashmina weavers and spinners. A fast in Karnataka in November ended after the chief minister’s intervention. The planning commission, not yet the Niti Ayog, invited comments on a handloom policy paper in December 2014. Of unknown authorship, the article suggested a paradigm shift in the sector with little indication of what such a shift might constitute. In Badanavalu in Karnataka, hundreds of weavers gathered to protest against power loom incursions, recalling Gandhi’s 1932 visit to what was once a thriving handloom centre.

‘Modernity’ Demands

Early in this new year (2015), raids were reported on some southern power loom units. A senior member of the union cabinet was believed to have intervened on their behalf. Affected by falling production and irritated by occasional inspections and seizures (although conviction figures were as low as nine in 2010–11), power loom interests were now seeking another opportunity to exploit the rising demand for the handmade with machine-made look-alikes. A delegation urged the ministry of textiles to remove sarees and lungis from HRA protection. In April in New Delhi and in May in Tamil Nadu, officials told activists that mechanisation of handlooms remained a “good idea.” Reports followed that the HRA might indeed be amended, with yet another attempt at making just one symbolic hand operation sufficient to qualify power loom fabric as “handmade,” and thus be eligible for handloom concessions. News spread of meetings dominated by power loom interests arranged within the ministry of textiles and the Office of Development Commissioner (Handlooms). A toothless HRA, its slender penalties seldom enforced by state-level inspectors, was now to be rendered hopelessly irrelevant.

M Mohan Rao, President, Handloom Weavers Association of AP, complained that across the country “from Varanasi to Ludhiana to Karnataka and Andhra, power loom weavers are making imitations of the sarees we make, and they sell them to consumers as handloom products.” President of the Mysore Power loom Manufacturers Cooperative Society was unapologetic—“There is barely any handloom sector left in India, so we have to make the traditional sarees and lungis that used to be made on handlooms.” At one New Delhi meeting, a lone handloom representative was mocked with these words. “We have progressed from the firewood chulha to the gas and electric stove. If we hang on to the technologies of our grandparents our children will laugh at us.” The core of the crisis was revealed with unexpected clarity—“modernity,” demanding a contempt for the burden of heritage.

Alarm bells rang as assurances received from no less than the PMO in January 2014 appeared to unravel. The Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012–17) recommendations were being threatened again by the prospect of revised definitions and a removal of the iconic handloom saree from protection. Weavers and their allies mobilised, their suspicions deepening of intentions within the ministry entrusted with handloom’s future. In the Rajya Sabha, Member of Parliament (MP) Kirron Kher made a spirited intervention on behalf of weavers, concluding that “none of the ministers seem to have heard what I have said.” Another rescue operation began. An online petition organised by Laila Tyabji of Dastkar, New Delhi, soon gathered 17,000 signatures. The pink pages, seldom interested in India’s second largest industry, were reporting that the world’s only major source of handwoven fabric seemed determined to wreck its own “Make in India” advantage. Television crews were in Pochampally, and elsewhere. Their reports were not all bad news.

Global demand for handloom quality was at an unprecedented high, fashion leaders reminded the media. Markets were clamouring for green, ethical products that offered individual identity through a touch of skilled hand. In locations such as Maheshwar in MP weavers flush with orders were struggling to keep pace with demand. Their numbers had increased from 200 in 1978 to over 2,000. A handloom school established by pioneer Sally Holkar was attracting young weavers from within and outside the tradition. Dastkar pointed to the growth in handloom demand over the last five years, covering a range that extended from Benares sarees and brocades to Kanchipuram silk, Bagru prints, Bomkkai sarees, Baluchari, and dozens of exquisite products as well as functionally perfect gamchhas and jharans. These claims were backed with sales statistics from top design firms and retail outlets, of which just one (Fabindia) consumed more than 11 million metres of handloom fabric a year valued at Rs 112 crore. Then, on 6 May 2015, the Ministry of Textiles issued an unusual release.

“No change in items reserved for production by handlooms”

Myth: The Government of India is going to amend the provisions under the Handlooms (Reservation of Articles for Production) Act, 1985, in order to give advantages to power looms.

Reality: Some requests were received for review of items reserved for production by handlooms. After a due examination of the matter, the Government of India has decided not to make any change in the Reservation Order issued under the 1985 Act, thereby protecting the interests of handloom weavers.

Two weeks later, a major thrust was announced in the prime minister’s constituency of Varanasi. There, a handful of great names in the fashion industry were to create collections that would “restore the glory of Banarasi silks and brocades in world markets.” Had the crisis moved at last towards resolution? Or were myth and reality alive and well on the banks of a river so accommodating to both?

A Plan Perspective

The Twelfth Five Year Plan’s recommendations provide the most comprehensive backdrop available for understanding the handloom sector, strengthened by the endorsement of states on whom implementation depends. Innovation and marketing dynamism are balanced in the plan with greater security not only for weavers but also for those (primarily women) who comprise the sector’s invisible workforce. Significantly, plan recommendations have seldom been cited in recent months of argument.

In contrast to the division in 2015, the Twelfth Plan emerged from a remarkably collegial and participatory process led by the Ministry of Textiles and involving all stakeholders. Observing the need to “develop a strong, competitive and vibrant sector” that can provide sustainable employment and reflect the “infinite variety” and diversity that distinguishes Indian textiles from the rest of the world, the plan calls for shifts in policy, strategy, and implementation, and detailed what these shifts should be. It notes the potential for providing “low-cost and green livelihood opportunities to lakhs of families, besides supplementing incomes in times of agrarian distress, checking migration and preserving the traditional economic relationships between different sections of the society.” Indian handlooms are recognised as meeting needs ranging from “exquisite fabrics that can take months to weave to popular items mass produced for daily use.” The need for aggressive marketing strategies is placed at the top of the plan’s list of key interventions, including a campaign to build and sustain handloom demand along the lines of the “Incredible India” effort.

The plan also calls for an overhaul of sector schemes, underlining that constraints are clearly not of falling demand, penury, insecurity, or drudgery—so frequently trotted out as symptoms of a “sunset” industry. That each of these challenges exists is acknowledged, and their solution is seen as demanding marketing savvy and a revival of respect for the weaver’s know-how. With dignity, the prime need of weavers is stressed as location-specific solutions rather than one-size-fits-all approaches. With the collapse of the Planning Commission, there is no assurance now that plan recommendations remain the sector’s way forward.

Challenge of Data

Current uncertainties are compounded by unreliable data for the sector, even in the Twelfth Plan. This may improve once the outcome of the Economic Census 2012 offers broad indications. The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, in partnership with the Ministry of Textiles, is expected to launch a census specific to India’s handmade industries once data from the Economic Census 2012 has been analysed. That effort, assisted by the Crafts Council of India and other activists, may finally reveal the actual dimensions of sector employment and its contribution to the gross national product (GNP). Whatever number emerges, it will be huge compared to the 3 million jobs in the information technology (IT) sector that captures such levels of national attention.

Current statistics are drawn largely from a handloom census conducted in 2009–10. It suggested that the sector then employed more than 4 million weavers and allied workers, against 6.5 million in 1995–96. This reduction has been regularly used to feed the “gloom and doom” scenario fostered in high places, suggesting the inevitability of a sunset. Other estimates range from 9 million to 20 million. These include post- and pre-loom employment, ancillary occupations, the invisible women who are estimated to do 50% of handloom work, and huge weaving communities such as in the North East where the loom is an inseparable part of identity and survival.

In 1977, it was estimated that every Indian handloom offered employment to six persons. Subsequent loom improvements (not requiring power) have brought the estimate to four. In contrast, a single power loom worker may supervise no less than four looms and possibly as many as eight. While the power loom sector is estimated to employ less than 1.4 million people on a three-shift basis, hugely inflated figures are in circulation.

Handloom production has grown steadily in real terms while maintaining a 15% share of the country’s total cloth production. The power loom share has declined from more than 61% in 2008–09 to less than 59% in 2013–14. Of total grants and subsidies to the textile sector of more than Rs 11,232 crore between 2010–11 and 2014–15, the handloom sector’s allocation was only Rs 2,176 crore. Major unutilised amounts under the Revival, Reform and Restructuring (RRR) scheme are reportedly left with the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD).

Opportunities

Exporters and designers today celebrate handloom fabrics as what designer Ritu Kumar calls

A unique product which has a huge edge on the domestic market and an unquantifiable potential overseas, placing India in a uniquely advantageous position. Its USPs include indigenous cotton as India’s bedrock fibre, hand-spinning which is lost of the rest of the world with its infinite variety, and the limitless fashion statements available from the variety of Indian hand-woven silk, cottons and wools.

Small runs of hand-spun yarn are a delight for the fashion market, according to Kumar, whose label is world renowned. She asks:

But why be obsessed with exports? The Indian market is huge. Not a single zardozi artisan is out of work. I have never had a problem with price. The young generation vibes with handloom textiles and it is design that can connect the weaver with the user.

Her optimism is shared by Ritu Sethi of the Craft Revival Trust:

Over 80% of handlooms are located in rural India where little or no electricity. Yet the handloom is operated throughout the day. Giving employment and skilling people, it uses the services of other village professionals—carpenters, loom-makers, calenderers, dry cleaners, press wallahs, transporters, makers of reeds, dyers, warping experts. It’s a complete eco-system of skilled workers—men and women ‘Making in India’ and earning an honest and sustainable living.

Stringent competition is the game in every market segment, demanding an ability to negotiate with and respond to market forces with speed and quality. That ability is entrepreneurship, a quality for which India’s artisans were once renowned along ancient trade routes. Today, far too many are trapped in oppressive systems giving them, like Ramalu in Susman, little or no control over their terms of trade. Frustration has turned many young artisans away from craft-based occupations. Yet it is this generation that is today demanding new skills in management, design, e-commerce, and language—capacities essential to strengthening traditional practice, to attract and hold new talent, and to empower weavers in ways that official schemes have so conspicuously failed to do.

Demonstrations of what can be done offer directions for the future. These include institutions built by Judy Frater and Holkar (Kala Raksha Vidyalaya and Somaiya Kala Vidya in Kutch, and the Handloom School in Maheshwar) working with artisan colleagues to create a contemporary pedagogy for craft learning; the pioneering Rural University in Jawaja in Rajasthan, innovated by local artisans in collaboration with the National Institute of Design and the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad); the Indian Institute of Craft and Design in Jaipur; and a range of efforts by design schools and activists.

Yet crafts are yet to be clearly linked to current Skill India and Make in India aspirations. Former Microsoft India Chairman Ravi Venkatesan observes that India has prematurely given up on its artisans just as the demand for sustainably produced goods, unique designs, and contemporary handcrafted items is growing rapidly globally. “What this suggests is an urgent need to revive cooperatives and producer organisations, scale-up entrepreneurship and innovative eco-systems in which multiple stakeholders can come out of their silos and collaborate toward sustainability and scale.”

Finding a Way Forward

A key learning that emerges from the recent anxiety and agitation is the importance of a handloom future freed from dependence on the government and preoccupations with exports and so-called niche markets. A more equal partnership would first require recognition that India’s handloom, power loom, and mill sectors all need to grow and flourish in their own right in an unlimited domestic market. It is not uncommon today for more prosperous weavers to invest in both hand and power technologies, and to use them simultaneously. Resolving drudgery must mean better ergonomics—beginning perhaps with functioning light bulbs and fans at the loom—rather than promotion of imitations.

Fakes are the real issue, not the capacity of power looms to serve a wide choice of cheap fabrics. “Subsuming” one section of the industry under another can make for bad management, particularly in an era familiar with market segmentation. The durable answers to spurious goods are consumer awareness and weaver protection. Reservations cannot remain the handloom’s only insurance, however critical these may be to survival. Lasting security requires a market in which handmade quality is demanded and paid for, and the ingenuity of artisans respected for delivering what mass production can never match. Technologies will continue to evolve, hopefully led by weavers service centres and their deep understanding of handloom technology and artisan need. The argument could then be less about the “purity” of non-power production and more about using technology to enhance, rather than dilute, value added through hand craftsmanship.

All this suggests rebuilding stakeholder collaboration of the kind that helped draft the sector’s Twelfth Plan, taking joint action to another level with strong private partnership. That may be difficult if the plan has gone the way of its commission and if the All India Handloom Board, once the space for stakeholder representation, remains as comatose as reports suggest. Without a functioning plan or a board, civil society organisations, once the ministry’s most reliable partners for ground action, now find themselves dubbed five-star pariahs. A deficit in trust may now be an even greater threat than the power loom lobby, and play straight into its hands. Hints of some movement towards greater cooperation have emerged with news of a handloom mahakumbh at Varanasi. Much may depend on whether that opportunity is led by the market, rather than by politics. Varanasi could offer a model direction, or end as yet another brief and unsustainable explosion of Indian talent.

A Varanasi Model?

News of a design blitz in Varanasi may be linked to the ministry’s recently announced intention “to encourage production of high value, defect-free products, make handloom market-oriented, increase earnings of the handloom weavers and giving handloom its glorious place.” The Handloom Mark introduced nine years ago is now to be supplemented by an “India Handloom” brand, with its own logo for “high value quality products as per need of the niche market.” E-commerce is to be central to the new strategy. The World Trade Organization (WTO) backed Geographical Indicator facility, under which 65 handcrafted textiles are already registered, is to be backed by “setting up quality maintenance mechanisms at the product and cluster specific levels.”

None of these directions is new, having gone through multiple avatars over four decades. The challenge has invariably been in implementation, seldom in intention. The effort at Varanasi is presumably to demonstrate how the ministry’s thrust is to work, and to provide a model for replication. Using the Make in India inspiration, cooperating designers are expected to set up “factories” in Varanasi that will deliver 1,000 jobs and create a demand for quality products showcased in national and international outlets. What is not known is how the who’s who of fashion will deal with real constraints, which are less those of demand than problems embedded in the supply chain. These include exploitative wages and appalling conditions of work, inadequate supplies of yarn and low capacities within weaver communities for entrepreneurship, and thus their inability to attract and retain young talent.

Civilising Modernity

The hope must be that the loom can tomorrow be a symbol of sustainable development as the global community is now learning to understand it—human well-being that reflects intelligent choices by those who have been empowered to make them. With vision and common sense, the handloom can offer a set of advantages that distinguish the Indian craft as a system unmatched for delivering genuine sustainability. These are green non-farm, non-seasonal livelihoods for millions located in rural hinterlands; an insurance against the miseries of migration; a low carbon footprint in an era troubled with climate change; a political and social safety for those still at the margins society (including women and minorities); and as a source of cultural and even spiritual regeneration in the face of global homogenisation. Yet these futuristic qualities still appear to some as sunset activities to be dismissed as “the technology of our grandparents that will make our children laugh at us.”

Contempt for inherited wisdom, regarded and discarded as a defeated culture, is at the core of the handloom crisis. It gives the crisis a significance well beyond looms and fabrics. It suggests cultural extermination to realise a cloned modernity. It encourages classificatory tricks in the garb of charity to artisans, an endangered species, rather than confident strategies to craft India’s own approach to its future.

Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-L, No. 32, August 08, 2015, http://www.epw.in/perspectives/indias-handloom-challenge.html


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