Working Paper No. 223 RELATIONS CX PRODUCTION IN HANDLOOM WEAVING IN THE MID-THIRTIES" TIRTHANKAR ROY - * The Paper forms part of a larqcr study under preparation, I have benefjtted from d' scussions with San:ay Kumar whose on- golag projeat on powerlooms his been a source of inspiration. I wish to thank Sumi-t Guha, Mihir Shah, Raman Mahadevan and Mridul Eapen for their.comments on a draft. I Centre ifor Development Studies, Ulloor, 'irivandrum - 11 . Descriptions of the hendloom industry in the thirties contain the suggestion that competition with machine-made cloth induced adaptations rather than 'a passive decay in the textile handicrafts. The nalrn conp~nentsof this process were diversifi- cation into 'ligher valued prc lucts, from cdtton to noncottan for instance, accompanied by differentiations in the technoeconomf c structure ta which the rapid yrohth of handloom factories and small scale powerlooms bears witness. The paper attempts a survey of the second of these components, relations1 changes. The process in its most general form involved reduction of ' independent' weavers to ' dependencef , that is, a progressive erosion of. the right of posseosion over final product. Two basic f orms of dependence can be dis:inguished: contract for sale of products tied to a particular merchant and contract for sale of labour. At the other end emergec large producers usually with interests in cloth trade. Pure ommercial capital was thus becoming differentiated and weaker as a class. Regional differences .in the strength and direction of the basic movement were considerable. The industry in the south, .including Bombay-Decczn and Hyderabid, proved more progressive with greater stratification among prcducers while in the east. and the north, merchants remained entrenched, collaborating or competing with large producer ,. The paper locates t'le precondi- tions for this. divergence in the intecedent structures of hand- loom weaving in these regions. The coexistence of modern and traditiona, technologies in Indian textiles has provcd s tab12 historically. What characteris- tics has the traditional sector1s groxth process assumed under these conditions? Has the coexistence been secured through a passive survival or dynamic adjustments? If the latter then what constituted these adjustments? These are some of the questions that form a background to the present study on prcductiofi relations in handloom weaving. In current historiography the problem of longterm evolution of crafts continues to be posed in terms of decay and survival. The question asked is, what prevented their elimination rather than what determined their growth. This practice rrot only renders detailed analyses of growth-process and conditions for growth unnecessary but leads to conjectures about the latter. For instance, theories which predict deindustrialisation allow for a very static conception of production relation in crafts -- typically, simple commodity producers surviving by selfuexploita$ion. On the contrary, historical sources pertaining to the eaxly twentieth century s~agestthe presence of accumulation and growth within the crafts, In other words, survival was achieved not statically through a fcssilization of the system but by precisely its opposite.u Quantitative descriptions of the industry reflect this dynamism. Thus cotton yarn consumed in the hand loon.:^ as a whole expanded more than three times between 1900 and 1939. Contrast this with a 40 per cent declint in cloth product.;on in the third quar cr of the nineteenth century according to the best estimates available.3 Much of the twentieth century statistics is too aggregative and hardly do justice to the complexity and segmentation within handloom weaving. When suitab,ly readjusted the data reveal that growth was in fact achieved not by way of import substitution, as a straight reading would suggest, but through continuous diversification into high value- added, skill-intensive, technologically complex products - from plain cotton fabrics to silks, mixed and synthetic fabrics, for instance (lable 1). In the process market-shares in quantum of the entire unorganised sector (handlooms and small powerlo~ms)were maintained and, in value, marginally increased after the mid-thirties. Much of this grov~rthhad been takir,g pl-ar:? in handloom factories and workshops, while powcrloons and centralised proces- sing units emerged as outgrowtr? .3f the handloorns. In Bombay-Deccan and Hyderabad roughly half of' the entire weaver population had .been reduced to a loomless proletariat by the late thirties. Those who were not dispossessed were ,.;?king under increasil19;i li9id contra- ctual arrangements. If Maxwell-Lc!froy ailii 4'!ris~rge'sst?t~.nent that, at the. turn of the century, Ithe single vieaver or fsmily is probably the commonest unit in india' is accepted in its spirit, then developments in the next deczdes consisted in a continuous erosion of the status of the hnuseholds, whc v!ere replaced by co- operative work of different forms. Table 1: Marke.t Shares in Textiles in tire hid-thirties Quantity (in million yards) Value (in million ~s.) Hand- Powel - Cthers Hand- Povrer Others looms looms --- looms looms 1931-32 Cotton. 154.8 42.3 "' I! *- P Non- q cotton 42.3 . 305 A 8 20.3 .. 67.3 ~otal Shares (33.2) (.-) (66.311 (.l8.4-) (-1 (51.6) 1937-38 Cottcn 138.1 ?.?i .7 11 .5 .. 72.2 (2~.i) (-1 (5.7) (.:6.5) (-1 (63.5) No n- cotton 64.3 12.8 '12.0 : 8.0 8.7 3.5 (72.4) ( L-3) I?; 5.) (17.4) (6.9) Total Shares (30.7) ( 1.9) 167.4) (~8.6) ( 5.3) (46.1) Notes: Quantity and value of noncat-Lcr, f ablic.. estimated on the basis of data compiled by the various I'..riff Board enquiries on cotton and silk. Figur~sin bracket-;represent percen- tages of total quantity or value of eac I type of fabric. ' Noncottonl includes silk and silk-SUDStitutes (synthetics, wild silks, spcn, stc.), mixed and nanespun cotton fabrics. 'Others' includes cotton mills and impcrts. These estimates are derived in my paper 'Size and Struciure of Handloom Weaving in the Mid-thirties1, forthcoming in Indian Economic and Social History Review. Buchanan and Gadgil, ine rariy chro~icl2rsof industrialisa- tion, sensed that industrialisetion in zap!.talist enterprises had come to include the handicrafts rather than taking place at their expense. Yet in their writings and in those of the contemporary crafts experts there remained a gap betvoen the level of empirical analysis, namely static descripticn cf forms of relationships and the generalisation implied, a process wherein all such forms were transitional. Cbnsequently while the generalisation was far too general to be seriously Pollawed, tho particular was reduced to a catalogue, similarities and contrasts 'between the elements of which remained arbitrary in the absence of a conceptual framework. 2/ This study attempts to reinterpret the facts as descriptions of a transition a~dexplores the transition ir its general aspects.. It begins with a description of the basic mvement, reduction of independent' weavers to ' dependence1 and clarification af what the terms meant( 'The Genera 1 Tendency,. .J . Forms of dependence varied and so did the nature of the capitalist associated. These differences which, moreover, had a regional component, wi.11 be brought out in the next two sections by an2lysin~the data regionally ('Forms of Depe~dence. l and lForhs oi Capital1). Thi< will be followed by a section proposing ce~tainhypotheses about why relational changes took different routes In 'different regions (lPreconditionst). Finally, implications of the movement for the long term growth- process and structural change in tcxtilis will be discussed ( Conclusion' ) . This sscticn !vill propose tcnta tive answers to the questions we have started with. The main intent of this paper is to describe and classify relational changes. Explanations must refer to the context in which the crafts functioned, especially competition frm machine-made cloth. There is a sense in which crafts-history can be seen as an 'articulation', between exogenous processes, An thie case market- induced, and the complex structure alxeady in eristence. This sense can only be explored in the larger study envisaged. The General Tendencv and Terlclino loqical Questions Reference to a materi 1 and moral decay in the textile handicrafts was as frequent at thp end of the nineteenth century as in the earlier decades. The famines cf the last quarter proved the weavers the most vulnerable of the rural classes. They were the first ia be reduced to : arvation because they had no store of grain and as soon as grain became dear, demand for their cloth. ceased. 'Most of them a e unfitted for t5e heavy labcur of the ordinary relief works1.J Town weavers reacted politically. Behind the food riots that broke out in Nagpur on the eve of the 1896 f arninr, weavers were prominent arnocg the ri ngleederst .g Where decay was gradual and resistance did not find an immediate object protest turned back on society. Thus Bankura silk rearers*:d in the 1910s were referred in official records as criminal tribes. In the twentietk century political resistance was replaced by a state of resignat5.cn. For the official engaged in upliftment this mood was transvlatec into 'stupidity and ignorancef, for any arbitrary intervention a-ousad only suspicion and incredulity among the craftsmen. The series of reports pr~ducedin the thirties made it suffi- ciently clear that the concrett ecobornic process reflected in all this was not an' all-embrticiw decline, as the ni ticlilalist writers interpreted then to be, but a differer,tiation. A distinction came to be made between the 'rclnk and file', the 'watfs and strays of the community' and the large producer for whom the former 'represented .a proletariat. The ordinary wea.rer, 'wherever be survives today is eking out a miserable s\:bsistenc? by working as a mre wage-i?arner in the numerous handloom factories and powerlocm millsf .lj In the mid-thirties, to which this stat2mer.t refers, factory workers were numerically a minority.