Saiyed Danish for IndiaTomorrow.net,
Varanasi, March 07: The moment you enter Sarayya Bazaar locality in North Varanasi assembly, heaps of dust, poorly constructed roads and poverty welcome you. It is a stronghold of Muslim weavers community and one of many such areas reeling under indifference and neglect from the government.
“Weavers are out of work here, sometimes for months at end. Many youths I know who used to be happily employed earlier are forced to pull rickshaws, repair bicycle and work at others’ shops. The self-sufficiency of ‘bunkar’ community is fast eroding,” says Sirajuddin, a youth who used to work as a handloom employee.
“Come and see our machine now, you will find cobwebs and dirt on it. We can’t run them now. Everything has become expensive for us from threads to graph plates,” adds Mohammad Iqbal.
Haji Waqqas Ansari, leader of weavers community spoke to IndiaTomorrow.net on the plight of weavers. “The problem lies in stiff competition with Chinese machines. Handloom weaving is being replaced with Chinese machines and we are not getting even those ones. Their production cost is too cheap and we cannot compete with them because these machines can produce sarees cheaper and in much lesser time than our handlooms.”
“One of the worst decisions taken by the Modi government is that of increasing excise duties up to a stellar 12% which has driven foreign buyers away from us. In Manmohan Singh government that excise duty was only 2%. It is a shame that despite India’s fame as the leading producer of sarees from Varanasi, it is Bangladesh which draws maximum of tourists to its textile products today. Even Pakistan today is ahead of us. All due to such an exorbitant amount of excise duties there,” he further informs angrily.
Not only Bangladesh, weavers say that even Gujarati powerlooms’ success is responsible for their decline. “They always got better electricity and the government felicitated them by helping them change to powerlooms when the times were changing. We get huge electricity bills but how can we pay when there is no earning,” says Ishtiyaq Rahman Sardar, an octogenarian who has witnessed the heydays of weaving community and also its downfall.
In the enclosed locality of Bade Bazaar, the issues and problems are the same and in some cases even worse.
A handloom unit in Varanasi
“It takes the cost of Rs. 20,000 and 15 days and sheer hard work of workers who work in demanding shifts of 12 hours everyday to produce one Banarasi saree. Our graph plates only come for Rs 10,000 and that too for only one design. In our profession we need to come up with new designs. Our threads and graph plate costs us Rs. 10,000-15,000 each. On the other hand, a Chinese power loom does all that at a low rate and that has literally snatched our livelihood,” says Zahid Ansari, who now runs a small general store after he could not keep up with the rising costs of saree production.
The controversial decision of demonetization by Modi government has left an already suffering weavers community in Varanasi totally depended on other meagre modes of income.
“It is as if that the remaining hopes of resurrecting our dwindling hopes of economic upliftment have been washed away in the storm brought by demonetization. We were heavily dependent on our savings but even that is gone. Only God knows our situation,” says Qamaruzzama.
As far as polls are concerned, the weaving community says that they are well-wishers of Mukhtar Ansari but they do not see chances of candidates supported by him winning.
“The alliance between the Congress and Samajwadi Party has changed equation here. They speak of Haji Abdul Samad Ansari from North Varanasi, Anil Srivastava of Cong-SP alliance in South Varanasi and Ajay Rai and Sunder Patel as strong candidates. However, they admit that since BSP declared their candidates a year ago, they have a strong record of people to people contact and hence their winning chances cannot be ruled out.
