Madanapalle weavers fight to keep their heritage alive amid economic hardship, fading tradition

Before the sunrise, the quiet Neeruguttu Palle colony in Madanapalle begins to stir with the rhythmic sounds of a handloom. Inside a cramped room beneath a low roof, 58-year-old Subramanyam steps into the pit of his loom. His feet find the worn wooden treadles, and his hands take hold of the shuttle. The familiar khata-khat sounds mark the beginning of another 14-hour workday.

Outside his narrow wooden doorway, long hanks of crimson, teal, and gold silk thread are stretched between bamboo poles, drying in the cool morning air. Women walk past, carrying brass pots of starch water, while elderly men sit on stone ledges, carefully winding raw thread onto wooden bobbins.

But the handloom is no longer the only sound defining the colony. A few metres away, the rhythmic khata-khat gives way to the lounder hum of machinery. Inside a poorly lit concrete shed, 48-year-old Venkateswarulu supervises four motorised power looms clanking at top speed.

Between the two men, who are descendants of a long line of Rayalaseema weaving families, lies a striking contrast: one is tethered to the old ways of the slow precision of handlooms, while the other moves with the raw, unyielding speed of automated machinery.

Their experiences point to a wider trend documented in government records. According to official records under the One District One Product (ODOP) initiative, Madanapalle’s silk industry operates with nearly 7,500 active handloom units and over 8,000 weavers, supported by 35 primary cooperative societies. Additionally, a fast-growing network of around 200 power loom units is in operation. In reality, more than 50,000 people depend on this sector for their livelihoods.

But the numbers only tell part of the story. For traditional handloom weavers, crafting a single six-yard saree—which fetches ₹15,000 to ₹25,000 in high-end shopping malls in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, or Chennai—requires nearly a full week of disciplined labour. Yet, what actually reaches the weaver’s hands is only a tiny fraction of that retail value, typically around ₹8,000 to ₹9,000 for materials and labour combined.

While the retail market undervalues their artistry, the local structural system squeezes their actual take-home earnings even further, reducing master craftsmanship to below-subsistence wages.

The unwritten rule here is that the master weavers and local middlemen supply the dyed silk yarn and metallic zari on credit, dictating the wage rate per piece. For a saree that takes five full days of hard manual labour to weave, a professional weaver carrying a State government ID card earns roughly ₹1,000 to ₹1,500—just ₹200 to ₹250 a day. This is noticeably less than what an unskilled daily wage worker earns at a local construction site or in the tomato loading yard at Madanapalle’s agricultural market.

For a community already navigating uncertain prices, unpredictable weather adds another layer of difficulty. The cottage industry is regularly disrupted by high monsoon humidity, which causes delicate threads to snap repeatedly. Weaving slows down, yet not a single rupee is added in extra pay. Furthermore, any rise in raw silk prices in the wholesale spot markets of major mulberry silk trading centres directly depresses weaver wages.

In such circumstances, the financial burden becomes severe for weavers families that rely heavily on a complex system of advance payments from master weavers and middlemen. A majority of weavers take small loans during lean agricultural seasons, daughters’ marriages, or medical emergencies—debts that effectively bind their labour for years.

“I took ₹25,000 for a hospital emergency, and suddenly I was tied to that trader’s order book for three years,” says Kavitha (35), a weaver who boils starch in a blackened clay pot behind the loom pit. “Even though we have the skill, we are not free to take our work to another trader who might offer ₹100 more per saree. Our old debt acts like handcuffs. In many cases, women like me work merely to pay interest, not to build a future,” she adds on a heavy note.

The cost of the crisis for the weavers is not measured only in rupees but also in the physical toll that the arduous daily routine takes on their well-being. Health surveys across South Indian handloom belts reveal that eight out of ten pit-loom weavers suffer from severe back, neck, shoulder, and knee ailments caused by sitting crouched in narrow spaces for hours without proper spinal support.

“Constantly inhaling fine thread particles and micro-fibers damages our respiratory systems. Bronchitis and chronic coughs are common among our families,” says Siva, a young weaver.

For Ramachandra (56), the strain on the eyes is equally unforgiving. “We spend hours aligning microscopic silk threads under a single hanging 40-watt bulb. It causes intense tension and headaches, which eventually lead to premature eyesight decline and gradual vision loss by our 60s,” he says.

The weavers see these hardships as a lived reality, but the officials demand attention to these concerns. A revenue official in Madanapalle acknowledges that, to numb the constant aches in their joints and lumbar spine, several weavers turn to alcohol or smoking after long shifts. “Persistent joint pain often leads to severe substance dependency, which consumes their meagre earnings, triggers domestic conflict, and ruins their physical health. Declining health, mounting personal debt, and meagre incomes drive many weavers to silently abandon their looms and migrate elsewhere,” he says.

If the handloom takes its toll through long hours of repetitive work, the power loom brings its own set of risks. A power loom worker handles 35 to 50 meters of fabric daily per machine. Power loom weaver Rajasekhar, 46, says the primary concerns are not spinal posture or eye strain, but rather constant noise, heat, and machinery hazards. “Working near high-capacity motors without basic ear protection makes noise levels hazardous over time. My ears ring for hours after my shift ends. I started a decade ago, and the ringing has eventually faded—not because it stopped, but because my hearing has dulled. Now, I find it hard to hear my family at home unless they speak at a raised volume,” he adds.

The physical strain is only one dimension of the handloom’s predicament. In the market, it must also contend with the speed and scale of the power loom. “A machine-made imitation is ready in hours for a production cost of under ₹2,000. These products flood regional wholesale markets, threatening the survival of the handloom trade. While official Geographical Indication (GI) tags and the national Handloom Mark exist on paper to protect us, the reality on the ground is very different,” says Rajendra (38), who dropped out of a B. Tech programme to return to weaving.

The struggle at the loom points to a larger challenge for the sector, one that officials acknowledge. Assistant Director of the Handlooms & Textiles Department, Annamayya district, R. Pawan Kumar Reddy states that relentless physical labour and economic hardship are driving the younger generation away from the loom entirely.