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Dress Code for devotees visiting Chilkuru Balaji Temple
Devotees paying their obeisance at the temple on Saturdays will have to stick to a new dress code, wear only handloom apparel.
The first temple in the country to prescribe a dress code to alleviate the plight of weavers,
mostly in rural Telangana which has seen a spate of debt-related suicides in the community.
Keeping this in view, the dress code has been introduced to encourage handloom industry.
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Today, to begin with ground realities, at the dawn of the 21st century, handloom production is still the
largest employer in the country after agriculture, employing twelve and a half million weaving families,
not including the loom and reed makers, dyers, warp-winders, sizers and other specialists who supply
ancillary support. Weaving is not confined solely to traditional weaving castes: when the industry thrives
in one region, many other non-weaving castes take it up. In Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh for example,
where weaving was introduced for income generation in the aftermath of natural calamity in the 1950s.
Apart from its formidable size, the other great strengths of the handloom industry in common with other craft
industries are its low overheads and capital needs, its variety and regional specialization, its versatility
and adaptability, its independence of generated power and of imports, and its smooth skill transfer mechanisms.
The other side of the picture is the lack and weakness also common to artisanal industries: an absence of
institutional support for credit, research, technology, management and market development. What the handloom
industry has which other craft industries are struggling for, is a domestic market cutting across the social
and economic spectrum and the urban/ rural divide: cotton handloom fabric is still worn and used by Indian people
of all kinds and classes.
This tenacious preference accounts for the increase in handloom production over the years. Though the percentage
of handloom as a part of textile production has dropped from 24% in 1980-81 to 20% in 1999-2000, the actual
production has gone up from 3109 to 7352 million square metres. (By the way, during the same period, mill production
has dropped from 36% to 4% and output from 4533 to 1714 million square metres. The figures are from the Compendium of
Textile Statistics, published by the office of the Textile Commissioner.)
The Disaster follow the links below...
1.The crisis in Sircilla
2.Handloom weaver commits suicide
3.Inflation casts shadow on powerloom weavers
4.Weavers seek ex gratia for suicide deaths
5.Weavers Sucides NewsRack more...!
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