Where the weaver is king

At the Karghaa store in Banjara Hills, there are stacks of handloom saris, kurtas... all around. And seated inside dressed in handloom, is the CEO of Chenetha Colour Weaves, Sudha Rani.

Working in the rural development sector for over 17 years now, Sudha has been associated with the weavers’ community for 10 years and has managed to create a model wherein the weaver is king.

“We wanted to create sustainable livelihood where there would be no migration from villages to the cities for the weavers. According to our model, the weaver knows exactly how much a sari is selling for. The initiative is weaver owned and professionally managed.”

In the model, the weaver decides the price of a product in consensus with Sudha. “We let them decide the price of a product but also make sure that it’s practical,” she says.

Focusing on the important handloom clusters of  Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, Chenetha Colour Weaves has 250 weavers who are their members and about 80 weavers who get continuous work. “We have weavers working at Nalgonda and Rajoli. I visit them once in 10 days and now the bond has become such that we are family. We have exposure visits for the weavers where they come to the exhibitions and see for themselves how their products sell.”

But there are also many challenges that she has to face. “To make the weavers understand the bigger picture is a challenge. They aren’t used to the modern designs or trends or the ever changing colour palette, so to incorporate new designs is a difficult task. That’s why we try to take youngsters for the field visits and show the weavers about how fashionable handloom can actually be,” says Sudha.