Coronavirus Pandemic hits livelihoods of Venkatagiri and Patur weavers hard

Nellore: Weavers of Venkatagiri and Paturu in the district are facing a Catch-22 situation due to the Covid pandemic, where they are getting hardly any orders from the traders. The problem for transportation, restrictions on marriages and other public functions are also impacting their livelihood. Normally, the annual turnover of the handloom products from Venkatagiri is around Rs 100 crore and this time, they fear, it would fall to Rs 2-5 crore only.

There are about 3,000 looms and 50,000 weavers in the town. Traders purchase sarees from these master weavers and mini-master weavers and local stores. Normally, traders and consumers across the country visit Venkatagiri and purchase sarees. Local traders of Venkatagiri also arrange facilities to the traders for their stay.

The rich cotton and hand-woven sarees from Gadwal, Pochampalli in Telangana; Venkatagiri and Patur in Andhra Pradesh; Kanchipuram and Coimbatore in Tamilnadu are famous for these sarees.

Local people say Venkatagiri saree has a 300-year-old history under the dynasty of Venkatagiri. The hand-woven saree is made of pure cotton with elaborate zari work and often with gold and silver borders and is suitable for humid and hot weather conditions. The Kasipeta Handloom Weavers Cooperative Production and Sale Society of Venkatagiri achieved the prestigious GI tag in 2011-12. The outstanding workmanship of the weavers has been recognized and the saree has become the 18th Indian saree that was awarded with the Geographical Indication (GI) from the Registrar of Intellectual Property Rights. But the weavers lament they failed to fetch the market using the tag. Most of Patur sarees are made of silk and cotton plain with minimum design and they are popular in the region.

In fact, in Venkatagiri, there were 5,000-6,000 weaver families earlier and the number decreased to 2,500-3,000 families right now. The number of traditional looms also reduced from 10,000 to 2,500-3,000, according to local weavers. There will be GST of 5 pc on cotton, and silk and 12 percent on Zari. Local weavers use some quantity of Zari for borders of the costly sarees that range between 25,000-and 50,000.

Master weaver Nakka Venkateswara Rao said that the pandemic ravaged the lives of the poor weavers and they got the support of Rs 24,000 twice from the government during the lockdown. He said they had provided some work for their livelihood and it was insufficient when compared to the annual turnover.

"We are getting online orders through www.venkatagirihandlooms.com and they are inadequate to support thousands of weavers who had confined to their houses due to the pandemic. We don't know how to bail out from the distress and the government has to plan for diversification of trade and availability of products at all constituencies for enhancing the opportunities to the weavers," Rao added. An artisan K Rangaiah from Patur said there has been no work for them due to no orders. Now, they are forced to get loans from private people for purchasing essential commodities.