POCHAMPALLY, India — The dusty rural town where Satyanarayana Taraka has lived for more than 40 years doesn’t sound the way it did when he was younger.

Gone is the familiar clacking sound of handlooms, manual machines used to weave fabric, which are slowly disappearing along with the area’s signature industry.

“Every one of these houses used to have two or three handlooms running all the time,” said Taraka, whose bony, weathered features stood out against his crisp white tunic. “Now there’s a lot more quiet because nobody weaves anymore.”

Pochampally, a sun-beaten town in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, is famous for textiles and saris. But its weavers, like many others in the country’s 6.5-million-person handloom industry, are struggling in a globalized economy that relies on cheap, machine-made cloth. As expenses outstrip their modest incomes and crushing debt pushes many weavers into poverty and suicide, they are looking to new solutions — from different livelihoods to cooperative handloom enterprises.