Rajasansi carpets up against UP, MP

Rising costs of raw material and labour in Punjab are pulling down handloom owners

Rajasansi's carpet units are crippled by competition from Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, and significant increases in prices of raw materials and other inputs.

Entrepreneurs say they have been going downhill over the past 10 years and the future does not hold out much hope.

In the 1980s, the village of Rajasansi was famous for carpet weaving. In the past 20 years, 30 per cent of the handlooms have closed down. Currently, it has more than 2,500 handlooms in the village and employs 5,000-6,000 people, 70 per cent of them women. The weaving is done at home, only on contract.

Compared with carpets made in Kashmir, which are made of silk, the carpet manufactured at Rajasansi is made of wool. The price ranges from Rs 150 to 200 per sq foot.

Talking to Business Standard, Talwinder Singh Chawla, who is in the business for the past 15 years, said: "Time was when carpets made in Rajasansi got huge appreciation in the domestic as well as overseas markets. At such affordable costs, carpets made in any part of the country could not match Rajasansi carpets in quality."

Singh has 120 handlooms and uses wool from New Zealand.

Singh said in the past five years, the cost of raw materials had almost doubled. For example, wool, which was priced at Rs 130 a kg five years ago, costs Rs 230 a kg. Moreover, cotton is priced at Rs 90 per kg today, while five years ago it cost Rs 50 a kg. Likewise, labour costs have risen considerably.

"We are not getting appropriate prices in the domestic market, because carpets in UP and MP are cheaper than carpets made here. Especially, we are getting stiff competition from Gwalior (where carpets are made from staple, which is considered 'duplicate silk') because there labour is cheap and carpets made of staple have more lustre than wool and staple costs less. Moreover, we use 6-7 colours while they use about 20 colours in a carpet."

"The cheapest Gwalior carpet costs Rs 125 per square foot while ours is Rs 200 per square foot. However, our designs 'Parda', 'Dabbi Bukhari' and 'Medalin' are famous and one finds these designs nowhere in India," he said.

Echoing similar sentiments, Gurdev Singh, a carpet maker with 22 handlooms, said, "Almost 30 per cent of handlooms have stopped operation because of high input costs and owners have ventured into other businesses. At this stage, the government must step in to correct the situation."