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The craft of survival - The Hindu

Opinion Lead
Published: October 22, 2014 01:26 IST | Updated: October 22, 2014 01:26 IST

The craft of survival

Shiv Visvanathan
Government policy is killing handlooms through malign neglect. As a result, the power loom is invading the handloom industry,
creating a whole set of spurious products which is altering the identity and integrity of the industry

Protest today is more than a dramatic performance, an act of defiance or even a demand for justice. It has to be a reflective
act, sensitive to past and future. Protest, especially when it concerns livelihoods, has to understand connectivity, especially the
linkages between life, life worlds, lifestyle, life cycle and life chances. Battling for ways of life demands that one understands
the full nature of politics and bureaucracy. One is penning these lines not out of some sociological pomposity but from
listening about a recent protest by handloom weavers at Gajendragad, the epicentre of weaving in Karnataka. The town is an
old Chalukyan site and was once the centre of the Vijaynagar empire. Today, it represents a different battle. If one draws a
circle with a 30 kilometre radius, almost all the handloom communities of Karnataka would be included in this space.

Policy as threat
The battle over handlooms is a complex one. At one level, the government constructs it as a sunset industry which keeps
eating up subsidies. Yet, as practitioners show, handlooms can be the fabric of the future. Handloom workers, they claim, do
not need charity. All they want is dignity and a clarity about norms, and a sincerity of government intentions. Unfortunately,
handlooms are being destroyed by the Sakunis of governance, when policy itself can become an act of deviousness.
The recent protests in Karnataka sought to emphasise this. At a concrete level, it was an objection to the Karnataka
governments decision to handover the production of school uniforms to the power sector. What looks to be a simple
bureaucratic act, an innocuous welfare measure, now threatens the livelihood of the handloom community.
Leading the protest against the governments decision are institutions like Dastakar and non-governmental organisations
(NGO) like Desi. I also met Prasanna who helps a rural womens collective called Charaka.
It was a few days after the protest. Prasanna was relaxing, reading Dashiell Hammetts The Thin Man. A one-time student of
IIT Kanpur, he is a graduate of the National School of Drama. For six years he was involved with Samudaya, a political theatre
group. As he talked about theatre, one saw weaving and theatre as the two strands of his life.
He talked of his mentor, Fritz Berkowitz, who was director of Max Muller Bhavan. Fritz was a great influence. I remember he
enacted Bertolt Brechts The Caucasian Chalk Circle with tamasha actresses without knowing a word of the local language.
Yet, it was a hit. He added sadly, Politics destroyed Fritz. He was an East German, who did wonders for theatre in India, and
was looking forward to changes in his country. When the Berlin Wall fell, he went back to his country. But the West Germans
surrounded him with a cloud of suspicion and virtually obliterated him. Berkowitz died broken-hearted. Fritz Berkowitzs
story almost seemed a prelude to the handloom drama.

Politics of classification
Prasanna explained that handlooms in India suffered from a classificatory politics. At the root of it is the Handlooms
(Reservation of Articles for Production) Act, 1985, a legislative act that goes back to the colonial era, to 1905. The mills for
cotton were threatening the weaver and even the British were concerned about it and wished to protect handlooms. They
included a list of 23 items which could not be produced by the mills. These items included colour woven fabric, and saris and
dhotis with borders and blankets. It was this act that the Central government was surreptitiously undermining. Prasanna
pointed out that all it took was a few backstage alterations to undermine a life-giving framework.

Altering an identity
Prasannas comments pointed to a folklore distinction between pathways and conways in policy. A pathway is policy with
ethical content. It is life giving, while a conway undermines livelihoods by destroying the ethical content of a legislation.
Conways in the handloom industry operate through classificatory tricks which blur differences between power loom and
handloom while pretending to be protective. One way is to change the definition of what constitutes handloom. A handloom
remains a handloom as long as three processes including the pulley and the shuttle are hand operated. All one has to do is
meddle with this list and declare that any process where at least one of these processes is hand operated is a handloom
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10/23/2014

The craft of survival - The Hindu

industry. With this Trojan horse of a manoeuvre, even power looms become handlooms. Several consequences then follow.
First, power looms can claim contracts subsidies previously limited to handlooms. The allocation of school uniforms to
power looms under the Vidya Vikas scheme is one example. But such an insidious politics goes beyond classification.
Our governments perceive the handloom industry to be pitiable, and define it as a sunset industry unable to deliver large
orders. The trick is to place large orders with the handloom industry at the last minute. For example, orders are given as late
as December or January to supply 35,000 uniforms in 15 days. This ultimatum creates the escape clause for the power looms
to take over. Government policy kills handlooms through malign neglect. As a result, the power loom invades the handloom
industry. This creates a whole set of spurious products which alter the identity and integrity of the industry. Prasanna added
that many power loom products add defects to prove their authenticity as handlooms.
The members of the All-India Federation of Handloom Organisations objected to the governments strategy. They went on a
padayatra, a 254-km walk across three districts in North Karnataka. Prasanna explained that these organisations were not
trade unions, but were buffer groups between weaver and market, merely seeking to enforce the Handloom Reservation Act.
He added that with the Vidya Vikas scheme for uniforms, the handloom weaver was at least assured of 250 days of work.
While reflecting on his protest, he made three other observations. He pointed out that apart from Dastkar and his
organisation, they were very few NGOs in the handloom industry. Oddly, it was a result of the problem inadvertently created
by Mahatma Gandhi.

Niche for khadi

Gandhi carved out khadi from handlooms. As a result, Gandhians perpetuated a brahminic distinction between khadi and
handlooms, which left the handloom weaver neither here nor there. In both khadi and handloom, while the weaving is
common, the spinning is separate. Yet, khadi is handled by the Khadi and Village Industries Commission, and handlooms by
the textile industry. Khadi has a halo, a touch of the sacred, even the pious, while handloom is seen as every day.
However, Prasanna added, one learns from Gandhi. Gandhi was shrewd enough to realise that it was the middle-class
consumer who could protect handlooms. The middle class has the surplus, and the patronage to sustain it. Prasanna was
shrewd enough to realise that the weaver was too vulnerable to be at the forefront of the battle.
He made a second point. He claimed that the handloom industry was not a sunset industry. Its members were not an
endangered community. India has more handlooms than the rest of the world. Handloom, he said, is the fabric of the future.
All the weavers needed is clarity, dignity and honesty and the consumer to recognise his responsibility in sustaining this
world. The consumer has a right to authentic fabric, but he has to be a trustee of such a world. Sustainability is eventually
about trusteeship.
He added that handlooms have their own goddess of weaving in Bhimamma. There are mathas in Gadag district, where the
priests are married women. Here, the offering to the god is always a cotton sari and the prasad given, a bundle of yarn.
One hopes that the goddess will be benign and turn handlooms into the fabric of the future.
(Shiv Visvanathan is a professor at Jindal School of Government and Public Policy.)
Keywords: handloom industry, power loom, Dastakar, Handlooms (Reservation of Articles for Production) Act, All-India
Federation of Handloom Organisations
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