BENGALURU:The city’s weavers are not a happy lot. They feel the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (BESCOM), which has introduced staggered holidays for small and medium industries, is taking a blinkered approach when it comes to power looms.
On October 28, BESCOM started implementing staggered holidays for industries to ensure they have uninterrupted power supply during working hours. But weaving clusters distributed around the city are still facing three to four hours of power cut a day.
Srinivas, a weaver who lives in Weavers’ Colony, asked, “Are we not considered an industry anymore? It (weaving) is one of the oldest professions, one that flourished as a cottage industry, and the city owes its development to us. Now we are not considered an industry.”
Ayappan Subhramani, of Weavers’ Colony, said, “There is already stiff competition for woven saris from readymade saris. Now the power cuts are here to break our back. Most power loom weavers have set up their units by taking loans, which we have to repay in instalments.”
“It takes us five hours to weave one sari with uninterrupted power. So we get two saris done in a day. With Deepavali coming soon, we had hoped to make up our losses. But with the power situation erratic, we can weave only one sari a day. We are unable to accept orders and are incurring losses,” he said.
There are about 10,000 weavers left in the city in pockets like Weavers’ Colony, Cubbonpet, Sampangiramnagar and Doddaballapur. Most of them had jumped from handlooms to power looms in the hope of increasing production and remaining competitive in the market. The art of weaving silk is more than 50 years old in Bengaluru. It was once the biggest cottage industry in the city and saris woven here were popular across the country, says Muni Raju, a weaver and wholesaler from Chickpet.
Meanwhile, L Manjunath, a weaver from Doddaballapur, accused the state government of failing weavers time and again.