HYDERABAD: As many as 2,000 handloom weavers have committed suicide in Andhra Pradesh during the last one decade or so. A report brought out by the BJP on the plight of weavers attributed the suicides to the absence of a government initiative to save them from the debt trap. The report’s lead author, BJP national secretary P Muralidhara Rao says the avocation has become uneconomic for weavers. They prefer to migrate to the cities to work as labourers. Rao recalled several incidents highlighting the plight of weaver during who a recent padayatra from Dubbaka to Siddipet which took him through districts with a high population of weavers. “An aged woman from a weaver family joined the march with me. At the end of the yatra, she approached me and asked whether I could get her a ration card. She did not ask me anything pertaining to weaving. She just wanted a ration card. But by the time a ration card was finally sanctioned for her, she was dead,” Rao recalled.“When I visited Mangalagiri in Guntur district, I saw a weaver unable to make ends meet. The pit over which the handloom is fixed was full of water and it was breeding mosquitoes. The weaver was suffering from fever,” he said.The BJP leader said the government instead of helping weavers, was in fact bleeding them white. “At Choutuppal near Hyderabad, I spoke to members of a handloom cooperative society. They told me that APCO, a government-run organisation, owed them `16 lakh for the cloth it had procured from them. Leave alone giving them loans, APCO has kept their money with it, which is nothing but borrowing from them,” he said.The weavers are suffering because of adverse government policies, globalisation and changing socio-economic conditions. The increasing competition from power looms and mills has been largely responsible for the crisis in the handloom sector. According to Rao, weavers should have access to raw material like yarn and dyes. They are now available at places far from their villages and the increase in yarn price is one factor that is causing concern. The government should set up low-cost decentralised spinning units in villages where handlooms and fibre production exist together. As regards AP, Rao wants all the existing loans to weavers waived and new loans provided at 3 per cent interest. They should also be provided credit cards. Co-operative societies and APCO should be provided a loan of `250 crore from the National Co-operative Development Corporation (NCDC) and `500 crore released as subsidy for silk and yarn. Extension of NREGA to weavers would also help ease the problem. The government should seriously think of supplying subsidising power to weavers, Rao said.
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