Innovation in Indian Handloom Weaving

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and Middle East, 2019

Abstract Handloom weaving in India is a vibrant and dynamic craft-based technology that is more than two thousand years old. It is the second-largest provider of rural livelihoods, with a 10 percent share of the domestic textile market, unified under the cultural brand of “handloom.” Yet weavers, like other craftspeople in India, stand in the shadow of deep divisions: rich/poor, urban/rural, modern/traditional, Brahmin/Dalit, educated scientist/illiterate laborer. As a system of knowledge, handloom weaving is associated with a museumized past rather than a promising future; the weaver is seen as a laboring body rather than an innovative mind. Yet through theorizing handloom weaving as sociotechnology, this essay endeavors to explicate the sustainability and innovation in handloom weaving. Studying examples of innovation in handloom weavers, the essay explores craft livelihoods as offering the opportunity for political action: as a unifying device for cultural cohesion, as embodied knowledge that engages both mind and body, and as a tool for justice and equity.

2016

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The Economic History Review, 2002

Acceptance of innovations in early twentieth-century Indian weaving 1 By TIRTHANKAR ROY H andloom weaving occupies a key place in debates about Indian industrialization. In the standard narrative, Indian industrialization tends to be identified with the rise of mechanized factories. Artisans have a marginal role in this narrative. 2 In one view, artisans, particularly handloom weavers, even represent a 'de-industrialization'. Decline and transformation in the artisanate was a worldwide phenomenon in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The process tends to be seen as a counterpart of the increasing use of capital-intensive technology, conventionally the chief characteristic of western industrialization and of industrialization as such. The adverse impact on Indian handlooms of competition with British power-loom cloth, aided by superior productivity and possibly by colonial policies, seems to illustrate that the gains and losses were unequally distributed. Industrialization in one part of the world imposed large uncompensated costs upon another. As if to undermine this view, at the close of the twentieth century, several hundred thousand handloom weavers survived in south Asia. In an alternative view, persistence of an archaic textile technology on such a scale suggests that the costs have been exaggerated, that industrialization can be of different kinds, and that the handlooms illustrate a kind that is compatible with south Asian factor endowments, consumption patterns, and the intrinsic flexibility of labour-intensive technologies. 3 Such a view would allow for a more diverse impact of economic integration on Indian traditional industry. According to it, the key process in handlooms was commercialization from below, rather than competition from above. This alternative perspective has been articulated in a number of recent works with the help of statistics and studies on consumption, industrial organization, and artisanal communities. 4 The significance of technology in these debates has been under-1 Earlier versions of this article were presented at two workshops, on 'Cloth, the artisans, and the world economy' held at Dartmouth College, and on the history of science and technology in India at the University of Mumbai. At these workshops, the article received useful comments and suggestions from the participants, especially from Douglas Haynes, Mattison Mines, and Abigail McGowan. Extensive comments from the journal's referees led to further and substantial changes in the arguments and the presentation. 2 Popular texts on Indian industrialization illustrate this deficiency well: for example, Bagchi, Private investment; Morris, 'Growth of large-scale industry'. 3 For a collective enterprise exploring the contribution of 'labour-intensive industrialization' in world history, see papers submitted in a session of the same title at the Thirteenth International Economic History Congress, Buenos Aires, 2002. 4 For a fuller discussion of these views and references, see the next section.

Economic and political weekly, 2012

Handloom is much more sustainable than common views and standard government policies recognise. Instead of a linear migration out of weaving into other forms of livelihood, weaving communities show a more strategic mobility – flexibly departing from and again returning to weaving, depending on circumstances. This mobility can be traced in weavers’ discourses about their vulnerabilities and aspirations. This paper shows that the standard image of weaving as premodern, unproductive and unsustainable is produced by being trapped in a progress discourse, a poverty discourse, and a market discourse. An alternative view of handloom weaving as a socio-technology is proposed: understanding handloom as an ensemble of knowledge, skills, technology and social relations explains the continued sustainability of handloom, and also offers clues for socio-technical innovation and an alleviation of vulnerabilities.

In this chapter, we focus broadly on the mutual shaping of culture and technolo- gy in the context of a particular case in the history of the handloom industry of India through an examination of ruptures made visible in economic practices of consumption, production and marketing. We reflect on the questions raised, not so much from an intervention angle but from positioning what are referred to as “traditional knowledges” in contemporary times while problematizing the very conceptual categories of “traditional” and “modern.” We also implicitly and explicitly work against modern-day “received views” about technology (Slack and Wise, 2005, 2); we examine the loom as technology, embedded in everyday life where the interplay between economics and culture is inseparable. Thus, we take seriously the notion of technological cultures as articulated by Wise and Slack, and work through particular contexts and assemblages of handloom tech- nologies—mainly around the pit loom and the frame loom in rural South India. [Chapter four of "Cyberculture and the Subaltern" co-authored with B. Syamasundari and Seemanthini Niranjana].

Nottingham Trent University, 2018

This research critically analyses the recent development of design education for traditional artisans in rural India. It focuses specifically on handloom weaving, which, across rural India is the second largest source of employment after agriculture. Handloom, however, continues to be afflicted by low wages and viewed as skilled labour rather than as a creative profession. The 'informal' embodied knowledge of weavers is widely devalued against 'formal' knowledge gained through school and university education as well as government skill development schemes. A lively discourse currently exists around the problematic divides between urban-educated designers and the artisans who simply execute the work of designers and are excluded from, or unable to access urban design institutes. In this discourse, weavers continue to be perceived as 'artisans' and never as designers, leaving little room to bridge this gap. In the last decade, two educational institutes have been established that challenge this dualism as well as the hierarchies that have formed between the 'artisan' and 'designer': Somaiya Kala Vidya (SKV) in Kachchh district, Gujarat, and the Handloom School (THS) in Maheshwar, Madhya Pradesh; each forms a focused case study for this research. Both institutes aim to nurture innovation and entrepreneurship, to enable artisans to connect directly with growing luxury markets for authentic, ethical and high-quality craft. Using multi-sited, ethnographic case study methodology, I captured the lived experiences of student and graduate weavers, faculty, staff, founder-directors and other stakeholders of the institutes, to measure the successes and challenges of the two institutes against their stated aims, as well as those of the handloom community and the state. By specifically inter-referencing craft development and education, previously treated as distinct areas, I have aimed to understand the relevance, sustainability and value of handloom in India for the weavers and for contemporary markets. Findings show that design and business education enhances the creative and aspirational capabilities of artisans, as well as their cultural, social and economic capital, as they mobilise within the now globalised spaces of the village and market network. Uncertainties

Design Issues, 2018

From a policy point of view, the nine million craftspeople in India are underdeveloped economically and in need of expert design interventions to adapt to the market. Within nationalistic projects those same craftspeople are transformed into a heritage that needs to be preserved, rather than having a trajectory into a promising future. Is there an escape from these discourses of poverty or museumization when thinking about craftspeople? In response, this article investigates how design can be key to achieve social change that craftspeople desire. I propose that designers intending to mitigate vulnerability in livelihoods of craftspeople have to design not towards a pre-determined set of desirable economic outcomes, but include social and cultural outcomes. Using empirical examination of designer narratives as base, this article extends constructivist STS concepts of “cultures of technology” to “cultures of design” to elaborate three lenses to analyze design practice: Intervention, w...

Design Issues, 2018

Introduction How can design practice mediate deepening economic, social, and cultural divides between traditional craftspeople and modern markets, to make design truly a paradigm for the social change desired by craftspeople? How can expert design practitioners effect social change, when modern markets risk appropriating traditional craftspeople as labor, albeit skilled labor, and either disenfranchising them as objects of charity, or museumizing them as cultural heritage? 1 In this paper, I focus on accounts from designers who work with people in vulnerable craft communities. 2 The accounts reveal that seeing craftspeople not as consumers of design expertise but as active producers of cultural value is an important step toward their emancipation.

Design Issues (MIT Press), 2011

This paper discusses the paradigms, aims and methodologies of my PhD research which I began in October 2014. The handloom industry in India currently employs over 4 million people and continues to be an important part of the economy, social life and identity of traditional weaving communities all over India. Following a series of declines over the course of the last century, due to industrialisation and imitated imports flooding local markets amongst other factors, recent development initiatives are helping to position these crafts in high-end urban and international markets. A new approach to craft development has been design and business education for artisans This research focuses on two case studies of education institutes, unique in India for providing long-term formal education for rural artisans: Somaiya Kala Vidya (SKV) in Kachchh, Gujarat, and the Handloom School in Maheshwar, Madhya Pradesh. SKV is sensitive to local methods, scale of craft production and traditions. The Handloom School invites weavers from all over India via local NGOs. Both institutions aim to enable artisans to connect directly with high-end clients. The research addresses a number of questions, including: how do educators and artisans balance local knowledge with contemporary design and business concepts? Who owns traditional and other designs? What is the value of handloom fabrics amongst both the weavers and the market? This paper discuses the research to date and the approaches employed to analyse the effectiveness of these institutions in nurturing innovation and entrepreneurship in the handloom sector, and to what extent they enable artisans to design and make craft products attuned to the demands of the contemporary market.