Silence of the looms

With the handloom industry in Assam facing an unprecedented crisis due to Covid-19, most weavers fear the worst — that they will never recover from this, write Rakhee Chaudhary & Venky Raghavendra

The sound of clacking looms is music to the ears of Assamese women. It depicts self-reliance and a steady income, as meagre as it may be. Nowadays though, the looms have fallen silent.

Sewali Devi, who hails from the village of Saraibahi in the Morigaon district of Assam, is a weaver who owns two looms. Her husband helps her in warping and spinning. Her only source of income comes from weaving handwoven gamosas with intricate motifs and designs. During Bihu festival, the Assamese New Year, and the wedding season, from September to January, she would be flooded with orders.

Gamosas woven in silk and cotton are worn around the neck by the bridegroom during a wedding. Sewali Devi would sell one gamosa ranging between Rs 700 and Rs 1,200. With the lockdown, however, her entire business has collapsed. She has received no orders this year. She fears that just like the lack of business during the Bihu festival this year, the wedding season would be subdued too, even though the lockdown would be lifted fully. Managing her family’s basic needs is going to be really tough for her.

Key to economy

The handloom sector plays a central role in Assam’s economy, being the largest activity after agriculture for rural Assam. Weaving is part of Assam’s culture, its heritage and identity for Assamese people. Mostly women weave the mekhela sadors, the traditional Assamese attire and the gamosas, a traditional towel which is used in every household across Assam.

Most rural weaver women usually sell only within their own villages or at the nearby local market and to middlemen who come from the nearby local markets or towns. In the wedding season, many weavers are able to get orders to weave mekhela sadors or gamosas from other village families. However, the lockdown has dried up all that income. With markets and local shops closed, middlemen have stopped coming to the villages. With dwindling incomes, purchases within their communities have also stopped.

The men do menial jobs and are daily wage earners. With the restrictions in movement, most village men also have not been able to venture out. Every year in the month of March, looms start clacking in almost every Assamese rural household. Thousands of handwoven gamosas flood the markets in the villages and cities across Assam.

Handwoven gamosas are purchased by almost every Assamese household and are given as gifts by the younger ones to the elders as a mark of respect.

The Bihu festival (during the second week of April) brings in the highest incomes to almost all weavers weaving gamosas. Thousands of gamosas are ordered by both government and private retail shops. In fact, the Bihu festival and handwoven gamosas are culturally interwoven in Assam.

Mekhela Sador

Supply hit

With the supply chain broken, most of the women weavers have not woven since the lockdown. The markets are closed and their supply of raw material is disrupted.

These women can only manage to buy their raw materials in small quantities as that is all they can afford to invest. Given the restrictions on large gatherings, markets are not assured in the near future as exhibitions and artisans’ bazaars are unlikely to be held this year.

It is not only about their daily survival, but also about how the weavers are going to repay the microfinance loans they owe to various microfinance institutions and banks. Most of the women weavers have payments to make every week or every 15 days. Winter season from September to February is the handloom exhibition season where artisans promote their
products. It is also the wedding season with the highest sale of mekhela sadors locally.

There is a pall of gloom hanging over the future of weavers as the upcoming exhibition season is in peril too.

There are not too many organisations upskilling the rural weavers and helping build market linkages. This is a critical need and is to be done working with government and local institutions within Assam. Although the MSME ministry has a number of schemes, it is a tall order for grassroots weavers to register and work under the ambit of MSME now or in the future. There is a need for reliable institutional support for the weavers, their skills and their incomes.

Establishing market ties, friendly loans to the women weavers and training to enhance value to their products are all needed to make their incomes sustainable and in turn, the rural communities more vibrant. Online promotion of products and sales is feasible too, but needs a lot of management especially since the weavers are scattered in many villages in far-flung areas.

Ill-preparedness to switch gears

Women weavers are not yet positioned to get into e-commerce unless there is significant hand-holding. The state and national agencies have to plan pragmatic programmes to ensure that the grassroots weaving communities are not left behind. For Rasuara Begum from Mangaldai district, weaving is her only income. Having taken large microfinance loans from local institutions, she is now unable to repay her instalments.

Each year she would receive yarn from the state government handloom office in the month of March before Bihu to weave gamosas and sell them back. This year she received no work and is worried about her future.

The handwoven products made by the women weavers of Assam are a powerful symbol of self-reliance. They feed a local economy, supporting families and keeping rural households brimming with the very basic day-to-day needs enabling survival.

The sustenance of the looms is critical to thousands of villages in rural Assam and are integral to the pride of the women weavers. The women are eagerly waiting to hear them clacking again.

(Rakhee Chaudhary leads the NGO Mulberry working in the villages of Assam while Venky Raghavendra is a social entrepreneur engaged with various community-led organisations.)