Along with Odisha’s famed ikats, there are many more art forms, designs and weaving techniques yet to be popularized and find a foot hold in the markets outside Odisha. We are already witnessing slow death of many such textiles – dhala pathar, kala pathar, siminoi, habaspuri, kusumi, original cotton Bomkai etc. In the post-liberalisation phase the numbers of handlooms and weavers was nearly halved within a decade.
Today, in Odisha there are about 44,000 handlooms and 1 lakh weavers remaining, with the numbers reducing by the day. Large hordes of weavers have been reduced to breaking stones in quarries, pulling rickshaws & trolleys, selling vegetables on the streets, etc. To add to the woes of the weavers due to neo-liberalism, older problems like poor wages, feudal master-wage-weaver relations, and stiff competition from powerlooms, untapped markets and consumer ignorance add to the poor socio-economic conditions of the weavers.
BOMKAI
Among the…
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Reflections 