Not much Onam cheer for independent traditional weavers of Balaramapuram

The rhythmic circling of the Charkha has punctuated almost every day of the past eight decades for Valliammal. Sitting on the verandah of her house at Saliyar Street in Balaramapuram, one of the major hubs of handloom in Thiruvananthapuram, the 83-year old goes about her work with the vigour of a fresher. With her assigned job of rolling the threads around a spindle to prepare them for the rest of the process, she is at the same time at the beginning of the weaving cycle and at the lower end of the pay scale.

“I have done this almost all my life, right from a young age. Now I get paid around ₹70 for a day’s work,” she says, even as her hands move with easy familiarity around the threads and the spindle. Inside the house, 65-year-old Lekshmi, Valliammal’s niece, is carefully rolling the thread around a ‘raattu’, a large spinning wheel almost as tall as the room. The threads from several spindles kept on a wooden stand a little away are being spun around the ‘raattu,’ all of the movements happening through Lekshmi’s physical movements. In the age of power looms, which enable fast production of material for the weavers to work on, she is one of the few who are still involved in making it all by hand.

“I have been doing this work since the age of 14. In the past, before it was divided up, this house used to be wider and we used to have multiple ‘rattus’. I now get paid ₹250 for a day’s work,” says Lekshmi.

The history of weaving in Balaramapuram began from this Saliyar Street in the early decades of the 19th Century, when the erstwhile Travancore royal family brought in a few families of the Saliyar (Chaliyar) community from Tirunelveli for the royal family’s clothing needs. It gave birth to a whole culture and tradition of weaving, which is now best known for the GI-tagged ‘neriyathu mundu’ with golden ‘kasavu’ borders.

Though the Onam season in Kerala is marked by the shiny whiteness of the ‘kasavu mundu’ and sarees, those who have been toiling hard in the traditional handloom sector for decades have mostly a gloomy outlook of their own future. While weavers associated with some cooperative societies have in recent years got better returns, those labouring independently on contract with private players have not seen their wages rising much in recent years.

Mohanan, 72, who works alone in a shed on a ‘kuzhi thari’ (pit loom) says that he continues to engage in the craft because he has not thought about doing anything else in his life. “When I started out in my teens, we used to get paid more than the agricultural labourers. It was quite a glamorous profession back then. But now, our wages are less than that of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) labourers. I get paid ₹250 for a day’s work,” he says.

Quite a few of those from the older generation whom The Hindu interacted with said that the welfare pension from the State government has been a relief amid the low wages. A group of seven women working on throw-shuttle pit looms behind a handloom showroom are hard at work to meet the Onam demand. One of them, Indira, says that she began working four decades ago in the sector with a salary of ₹3.5. Over the years, after decades of massive inflation, her wage stands at ₹250, with the occasional bonus. “None of us are from the traditional weaving families. We took this up at a young age due to the poverty. But, this profession has allowed us only to barely survive,” she says.

Industries Minister P. Rajeeve said that he hasn’t looked at the specific case of weavers operating independently, but the State government has allocated ₹20 crore to Kerala State Handloom Weavers Co-Operative Society Ltd (Hantex), along with other aid.

“The package will reach all the cooperative societies and weavers working under them. The government is also providing income support through the school uniform scheme. There are also schemes to procure products from these societies,” he said.