It was the last Sunday before Onam and the weavers at the handloom expo organised by the Industries department at Stadium grounds in Kozhikode were mostly whiling away their time chatting with each other. A handful of customers were loitering around the stalls looking for something particular and often not finding it. Some walk away just as they ask for the price of a product, finding it too high for their liking.
“If not for the 20% government rebate no one would want to purchase handloom products. The prices have gone up much over the past year. But it is beyond our control as the prices of raw materials too have gone up,” said T.Venugopalan, a weaver with the Kadathanad Weavers’ Cooperative Society.
