Azizur Rahman recently parted with his entire life savings — a princely sum of a lakh and a half rupees — to buy a powerloom. Rahman and his family of handloom weavers in Varanasi had long yearned for the machine. And there it was in his dingy house in the dusty, cramped bylanes of Pilikothi, its half horsepower motor chugging tirelessly. Rahman is pleased. Manual labour has fallen. Output has multiplied. Electricity expenses rose too, no doubt, but a subsidy scheme offered by the government of Uttar Pradesh ensures that they do not pinch.The only rub is that Rahman now makes far less money per product. One handloom saree can fetch up to Rs 20,000. A saree created by a powerloom sells for about Rs 2,500-3,000, of which he earns only a fraction owing to the presence of a middleman, or gaddedar (trader in local parlance) who supplies material including cards, yarns, dyes and even design. "In powerloom, as the work is less laborious, it becomes a volume game," says Rahman, as he weaves a Sherwani fabric.That means Rahman and his brothers work 24x7 shifts. The gaddedars offer a buyback guarantee at Rs 22 per metre of the woven product. A full shift produces 25 metres and yields a net income of Rs 550. That is not a patch on the price of a handloom saree, but he would have had to devote six months and greater toil to produce that saree. Playing the volumes game has guaranteed that Rahman’s overall earnings have increased.Rahman's family is hardly the only neo-powerloom convert in Varanasi (also called Kashi and Banaras). A thousand other families at Pilikothi in the heart of the holy city, synonymous with the renowned hand-woven Banarasi saree, now swear by powerlooms.This exodus of Varanasi weavers from traditional handloom to machine-driven powerloom — in the last five years, the number of handloom households in the city has dropped to about 25,000 from 40,000 — has caused dismay among policymakers in New Delhi's Udyog Bhawan, which houses the ministry of textiles. They fear that the famous Banarasi saree (its handmade origin lends its superior, embellished and exquisite character) is facing an unprecedented survival crisis of sorts.News of the troubles of Varanasi's handloom weavers reached the Prime Minister's Office. Prime minister Narendra Modi is the Varanasi MP and during the election campaign, he had promised to revive the sector. In his first review meeting of the textile sector on June 27, 2014, Modi asked bureaucrats to find ways to link handloom with fashion. Modi believes that it is the answer to increasing the price of handloom products and inflating the earnings of weavers. The move is significant nationally because handloom weaving is the second largest economic activity in the country after farming, employing 43 lakh weavers, besides indirectly benefiting another one crore people, according to statistics available with the textiles ministry."The government is serious about linking fashion and modern designs to handloom. That will appeal to rich customers in cities and benefit the weavers," says SK Panda, Union textiles secretary.As part of the plan, the government will create a new brand named "India Handloom" to differentiate the superior handloom products from powerloom products. In Varanasi, it has chosen through a tendering process two design houses — Sai Creation and Rinku Sobti Fashions — which have to work closely with Varanasi weavers and provide them at least 2,200 new designs in the next two years, in addition to a buyback guarantee of products worth Rs 4.4 crore. The selected design houses in turn will receive a fee from the government, according to a textile ministry official not willing to be named. This is now a pilot project, which will be eventually expanded nationally.The government will also encourage fashion school students to undertake more field visits to handloom clusters and include more chapters on handloom in their curriculum.In theory, linking modern designs to the Banarasi saree is not a bad idea (on his first visit to Varanasi in November after becoming PM, Modi urged weavers to embrace modern platforms and adapt to the changing needs of clients). That might guarantee acceptability in the market, better prices and thereby more income for the weaver — unjustifiably, the smallest cog in the textile value chain.But in practice, it's not as simple. "Reputed designers often come to Varanasi, but they cover only a few handloom households. They do place orders, but only a few weavers become beneficiaries," says Syed Hasan Ansari, a gaddedar in Varanasi.Then there is the matter of copycats. Designs supplied by fashion school graduates can be copied easily in powerloom, say weavers. Syed Haminuddin, who is holding the fort with handlooms, says weavers like him need designs that are exclusive to handloom.Haminuddin takes immense pride in his work. He showed this writer photos of a German woman designer who spent several days at his loom, learning the nuances of Banarasi saree designs.Now, the weavers in Varanasi depend largely on designs created by neighbourhood designers. According to a study undertaken by Ahmedabad-based Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India, there are up to 500 such designers. One designer gets about `300 for a design and the job is not exactly lucrative. After all, it’s creative work, and no designer can produce more than 75 worthy designs a year. Designers branch out to allied work such as cardmaking to earn extra money. Cards placed on the loom guide the thread and thereby weaving.Dr Smriti Yadav, an associate professor of National Institute of Fashion Technology's (NIFT’s) Raebareli campus, says her students do visit Varanasi and interact with weavers. But she insists good designs alone will not help a weaver earn a decent living. "A weaver may get the right design, but ultimately he has to hit the right channel to sell the product at an appropriate price," she argues.Here, weavers can only turn to gaddedars or another group of people called master weavers. Master weavers are quasi-traders who directly engage with weavers, giving them the design, raw materials and inputs in weaving too. Gaddedars, on the other hand, are pure traders (some are exporters too) and they keep off the day-to-day affairs of weaving. Typically, both these groups are stingy with passing margins to weavers.Despite the mounting odds in handloom, there are still some weavers in Varanasi who are resisting the migration to powerloom. A few families like Ram Lal Maurya's of Bazar Diha locality in the city are not even willing to experiment with new designs by reputed designers. Maurya, for example, is a fourth-generation weaver who sells only heavily embellished Banarasi sarees. He quotes a fixed price of Rs 75,000 for one saree. The price has no bearing on bookings, with all his 10 looms booked for the next six months (one handloom costs about Rs 15,000). He avoids the gaddedar route, selling directly to a limited set of clients based in Kolkata, Mumbai and Ahmedabad. The product is couriered and money is transferred electronically through banks."Our clients are ready to pay us a good amount even as we have been using just one design for over three decades now. Our only experimentation has been a change of colours. Why will we embrace a new design if the existing one works well?" asks Maurya. His designs called Nilambari, Shetambari, Pitambari etc are actually one design with different hues.Problem is such weavers are a minority. The government firmly believes that only linking market-driven modern designs with handloom can save traditional handloom weaving in Varanasi and other clusters (See box on Other Handloom Hubs). In January, a national workshop on promoting handloom in fashion was held in NIFT's campus in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. Officials said it was a great beginning. The government has now decided to make this workshop on promotion of handloom with fashion an annual event where one NIFT campus will actively involve with weavers of the nearby handloom clusters."We are planning to digitalise traditional handloom designs, and create a brand for high-value handloom cloth," says Panda, explaining a series of initiatives to revive the handloom sector. In August last year, the development commissioner for handlooms, under the aegis of the textile ministry joined hands with online retailer Flipkart India to provide an online marketing platform and market intelligence to boost Indian handloom weavers."Through this exclusive agreement, Flipkart will provide weavers in India online marketing platform, infrastructural support in data analytics and customer acquisition to help them get remunerative prices for their products and scale up their business,” a press statement issued then said. Seven months later, online sales, particularly the highvalued handloom products, are faltering. "Customers are still unwilling to spend Rs 5,000 or Rs 10,000 to buy a handloom saree. That's why we would like to bring in Handloom India brand," says secretary Panda.