The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Caught in a web of dreams and debt

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 24, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Caught in a web of dreams and debt

Alladi Jayasri

Weavers fall for it when they see a big order coming, only to be pushed to distress sale

— Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

FRUSTRATED: A file picture of a weaver working on a powerloom at Doddaballapur, near Bangalore.

BANGALORE: Every day, at least one powerloom stops doing the warp-and-weft drill in Doddaballapur, 40 km from Bangalore, the weavers’ town where, 10 years ago, over 25,000 powerlooms could be seen in every second house, meeting the demand of Bangalore and elsewhere for silk and artificial silk.

Today, there is every chance that the traditional weaving community, the Devanga, which took pride in its skill and reputation as the silk stop, will become a soulless entity. Trying to make ends meet in what is essentially a buyers’ market has brought untold miseries to the weavers of Doddaballapur.

Downhill ride

After two decades of being toasted as the example of successful entrepreneurship, Doddaballapur has been on a downhill ride in the last 10 years. Liberalisation, emergence of cheap synthetic alternatives to silk, and the dumping of Chinese silk has driven most of the 25,000-odd weavers in this cottage industry into a debt trap.

“It is a debt trap that cannot be quantified,” says A.O. Avalamurthy, who belongs to the Devanga community, and is a lecturer of physics, who has studied the weavers’ problems in detail.

“It is a vicious cycle. The weavers are caught between the suppliers of raw material and the buyers who dictate prices,” he said.

It works like this. Most of the weavers, who have pumped all their money into the purchase of the looms, are left with very little capital to buy the raw materials, especially its main ingredient, silk yarn. The yarn is available only in Bangalore, and the weavers when they see a good-sized order coming through, are easily tempted to buy on credit. The yarn is supplied at a slightly higher rate but the weavers are just happy to have the looms running, if only for a while.

Then begins the nightmare. When weavers try to dispose of existing stocks, the buyers swoop in for the kill, and fix rates that force them into distress sales to cut their losses.

Meanwhile, the bills keep mounting — the interest on the debt, the unsold stocks or undersold fabric, the wages to be paid to workers, and the power supply costs.

Hope floats at festive times like Dasara. Durga puja in Kolkata is a good time for Doddaballapur weavers. Nowadays, even a tiny order can count as a “good time”. Earlier, “Amani” or the slack period lasted about three months. Now it is “Amani” for most of the year. However, there have been efforts to organise the weavers to fight for a better deal.

G.B. Hemanthraj, president of the Nekarara Horata Samiti, said: “Although the Government announced a scheme to waive interest on loans incurred by weavers, many banks have not extended the facility to them. In our campaigns, we have been demanding waiver of interest on loans and fresh loans at 6 per cent”.

The embattled weavers have in the last five years opposed the slab system of charging the powerlooms on electricity consumption. In fact, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra have given free electricity or subsidised power supply for the powerloom sector, and in Tamil Nadu, the market is controlled by the producers through cooperatives and Government regulation.

Mr. Hemanthraj said this would go a long way in mitigating the weavers’ woes.

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