Covid spells bring-handloom industry to a standstill

478
Published on December 3, 2020 by

The nation-wide lockdown had a huge impact on the handloom industry in Kullu. The pandemic has to lead to a decline in sales adversely impacting the income of the workers.

Kullu: Almost 80 percent of Kullu’s population depends upon handloom Industry for their income. A decrease in tourism resulted in a decline in sales impacting the income of the workers.

“The Bhuttico handloom emporium of Kullu had an income of Rs 10 lakh last year. Due to the pandemic, we have suffered a loss of 60 per cent. I had a loss of Rs 8000 in my salary,. ” said Mr. Terath Ram, a Store Supervisor.

The lack of orders further contributed to the losses. The Industry which received around 5000 orders last year had only 3500 orders this year, said the owner of a small scale Industry in Kullu.

According to Mr Om Chand, the worker at a small scale industry in Kullu, “An industry, on average spends an amount of Rs 4.5 lakh on their labor and raw material. The nationwide lockdown impacted us in a way that we didn’t get any salary for three months. Everyone was out of work. There was a loss of 60 per cent in the income of the industry when the work started. ”

The handloom Industry of Kullu is most famous for its shawl. The workers spend almost a day working on the non-designer shawls and almost a week on the designer ones. It is their only source of livelihood.

According to Ms. Deepa, a small scale Industry worker in Kullu, “The lockdown had a huge impact. Our source of income was gone and ever since we have re-started working, we had 30 percent loss in our orders.”

The impact of losses was also intensified because of the lockdown during the busiest months for business. Many industries have now shifted to online platforms in an effort to recover their losses.

Keywords: Handloom, lockdown, pandemic, Kullu, Covid-19

Category Tag

Add your comment