Click to play videoKancheepuram: A lucrative salary and a white collared job is making the weavers of Kancheepuram abandon their ancestral occupation.
The once thriving business of silk-weaving in the looms of Kancheepuram is facing the haunting problem of acute shortage of skilled labour. The reason – the weavers of the silk city are leaving for more lucrative jobs in the newly developed manufacturing factories of nearby areas like Sriperumbatur.
As the neighboring Sriperumbatur belt was opened to the manufacturing giants like Nokia and Flextronics, these companies have become a major attraction to the villagers, with close to 20,000 people shifting to these factories.
Weaver R Balan says that there is no money in silk-weaving.
“There is no income in this occupation now,” he says. “Wages don't match the work that we do. Even the wages that we get from government is more than what the private looms give, and that's why we find it easier to shift to the private companies,” he explained.
Organised textile units are also facing the brunt of labour shortage. With the appreciation of the rupee, textile mill-owners are finding it hard to increase the wages.
“There is a limit to what the textile industry can pay and precisely for this reason the textile industry is moving from west to east,” explained Manikam Ramaswami, of the Southern Industrial Mills Association.
“If we increase our cost, say beyond four dollars, then the textile industry cannot stay in India,” he points out.
The private handloom owners are slowly coming to terms with this change and the only option which they see right now is to retain the present work force by giving a hike that would come close to what the manufacturing units are paying.
As the textile industry as a whole takes a beating, the new generation from the weaving families prefer to work in a Flexrtronics or a Nokia factory, rather than bargain for a better wage with the handloom owners.
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