The largest employment provider of the country, the handlooms, has been witnessing threats and multiple layered crises since long. Despite the crisis, as per the 2001 Ministry of Textiles report, the sector provides employment to 124 lakhs of people. Besides the sector is also an important source of cloth production and it contributes 18.75% of total cloth production (Niranjana, 2001 However there is a declining percentage in the work force at the national level. According to the handloom census, the workforce dropped by -2.81% between 1987-88 and 1995-96 at the national level, and by -19.96% in the state of Tamil Nadu. The non-availability of adequate quantity of good yarn, lack of direct market access to the weaver, lack of credit availability and illegal production of reserved handloom designs, and the consequences of power looms are the common reasons for the problems experienced by the handlooms sector. This crisis has strong implications for the livelihoods of handloom weavers(L.C.Jain, 1983 Sinha,1988; Srinivasulu 1985,1997; Bharathan, 1988; Noorbasha Abdul, 1996; Charsley, 1992; Mukund, 1992 This article explores the survival challenges of silk weaving industry in India with the background of exiting researchstudies.
