October 2019 Edition Apparel October 2019 issue | Página 37

FEATURE
THE DECLINE OF THE LOOM
In their heyday, the handloom and apparel
industries were considered one and the same.
Long before industrialisation swept the nation,
manually operated handlooms were the pinnacle
of manufacturing and were responsible for
clothing everyone from the common citizen
to regents of the land. However, ever since
industrialisation, this handloom tradition,
which started well before Independence, has
changed radically. Before and even during the
Independence era, the charkha or handloom
wheel was looked at as a symbol of self-
sustenance as it could be operated by a single
individual to fulfil their own needs.
According to the most recent numbers in
the Fourth All India Handloom Census of India
2019–20, there are about 3.5 million workers, of
whom 3 million are based in rural regions. And
while many of these people are involved indirectly
in the industry, only 2.6 million weavers remain, a
considerable drop from the 2.47 million workers
in 1995. Moreover, the majority of the industry is
fragmented and made up of individual artisans,
upwards of 2.57 million, with the rest organised
loosely under co-operatives and organisations.
Even the Khadi and Village Industries Commission
(KVIC) board only employs 15,144 workers
directly. Over the years, there has been a drastic
and steady decline in these numbers as people
have begun to look elsewhere to make a living.
And it is easy to understand why.
Of course, this problem has not gone
entirely unnoticed, what with the Government
attempting to offer relief and support packages
to these groups. However, given their rural and
fragmented status, this sector has suffered greatly
over the last few years under policies such as
demonetisation and the Goods and Services
Tax (GST). It was even more evident that the
Government had the will but not the means to
IT IS NOT JUST THE GOVERNMENT’S
INACTION THAT IS KILLING
TRADITIONAL HANDLOOMS.
offer true support when the handloom industry
was allocated only R398 crore in 2018–19 as
compared to the R604 crore-allocation in
2017–18. In 2019, this number only went
marginally up to R456 crore.
But of course, in the modern era, it is not
difficult to understand that it is not just the
Government’s inaction that is killing traditional
handlooms. Given the rapid rise in mechanisation
and autonomous factories, the effort-intensive
process is now easily managed by power
looms. Moreover, the rise of synthetic materials
is depriving the world of the merits of what
traditional handlooms have to offer. We can
now see that the number of handloom weavers
and artisans is in steep decline purely as the
APPAREL
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October 2019
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