Computer aided units drive Chirala farmers out of business Utter penury greets you in every house that has a loom. Twenty-three-year-old Sivasarada and his family, including his parents and ageing grandmother, put in an average of 10 hours of work a day to prepare 12 pieces of 8 m-long Pattamarapu for a Tamil Nadu-based export company. Still they earn just Rs 4,000 a month. In Jandrapeta village, weaver couple Sulochana and Rama Rao get Rs 2,400 for 36m of kurta tops. School dropout rates among the children in the community are high because of poverty and the need for additional labour. At a time when they should be going to school, weavers' children are helping their parents to make ends meet. Since able-bodied adults are mostly busy with loom work, and elderly people are unable to perform fine work due to failing eye sight, children are roped in for making new wefts by joining threads to a piece from the old weave. This work, often involving the skilful matching and arranging of threads in correct order, is quite a strain on the eyes. And since joining of one set of threads takes around 12-14 hours, children, mostly girls, are required to sit in one place for long hours. The wage for joining one set of threads is around Rs 30. Folding and packing work is done almost entirely by children. Unequal competition with computerized mass production has impacted the handloom industry in Chirala in a number of ways. For one, it has turned the wage-work equation against the weavers like never before. Says elderly Saraswati Amma of Devangapuri village in Chirala: "In our times we were poor, but not as badly crushed as now. We used to make simpler sarees but the wages were commensurate. Now my son and daughter-in-law have to strain their eyes for hours weaving these ornate designs to earn just Rs 330 for one saree." The weaving process of each of these heavy-work sarees alone takes up two long days, she says, along with spool and weft work of at least two more days. Malikamma of the same village, whose son Venkat Subbarao committed suicide three years ago, agrees, "When I was young, my husband used to work at the loom, while I did the spool-winding and weft work. We could earn enough to bring up four children. But today you can't earn a living unless the entire family is roped in the work. At least four workers are needed per loom, while earlier two were sufficient." One of the reasons that led to Subbarao's suicide, she explains, is that his wife did not know loom work and the family was unable to sustain itself on his work alone. The extraordinarily long hours of work are taking their toll on weavers' health. Sulochana suffers from constant headache, eye-strain and body ache. Sivasarada's father Ranga Rao developed tuberculosis while in his 40s, and the family had to take a loan of Rs 40,000 for treatment. "The doctor says I should not work for more than four hours a day," he says. "The cases of tuberculosis, asthma, nerve weakness, eye-strain and body ache have risen steeply among the present generation of weavers, and are also manifesting themselves at an early age," Says Sajja Srinivasa Rao, district president of RCJS. "Many women have had to undergo hysterectomy at the age of 35-40. The reason is that we are forced to work for 12 to 14 hours a day." The pressure from computer-aided designs has also impacted the development of the Chirala weaving art, driving out the simpler traditional designs in favour of elaborate niche products. In Devangapuri, every one of the 40-odd weaver families is making the same kind of heavy pallu and border 'gas cotton' saree, priced uniformly at Rs 900. At master weaver Nageshwara Rao's house, the entire stock of hundreds of sarees consists of just this one variety. While opposed to the activities of trade union because of business reasons, Nageshwara Rao agrees that the widening wage-work gap has not been good for business. "Even 20 years ago, the wages for simple sarees were good. But since the cheap look-alikes have arrived, I can't get the weavers to make the simple traditional sarees, which have a good market. Thee heavy-work, jacquard designsarees are more labour intensive and high-risk, but the simple sarees are so unremunerative for weavers that they would rather make these. " While earlier his product had a secure mass base, now he is forced to cater to the unreliable and highly competitive niche market. -Down to earth feature