How many handloom weavers are there in India? According to the 4th All India Handloom Census (2019–20), there are 26,73,891 handloom weavers and 8,48,621 allied workers in the country.1 In other words, there are a total of 35.2 lakh handloom weavers in the country.

Challenges in Estimating the Number of Handloom Weavers in India: A Comparison of Data Sources
The Handloom Census counts total number of weavers and allied weavers’ households by the presence of looms in their household. There were 1.12 workers per household in 2019–20. This makes sense as a ‘handloom’ is defined as “a loom that is used to weave cloth without the use of any electricity. Hand weaving is done on pit looms or frame looms generally located in weavers’ homes. Weaving is primarily the interlacing of two sets of yarn – the warp (length) and the weft (width).”2

The Handloom Census also probes household members about the weaving activity undertaken in the previous one year. The total number of handloom worker households went up from 27.8 lakh in 2009–10 to 31.4 lakh in 2019–20.3 However, the number of workers came down from 43.32 lakh in 2010–11 to 35.2 lakh in 2019–20. The differences in trends between households and workers is quite puzzling.  Bhowmik (2019) points that the increase in handloom households over a decade is counterintuitive to ground reality.4 One explanation could be the rise in employment intensity i.e. the number of person days rose from 183 days in the 3rd Handloom Census to 208 days in the 4th Handloom Census. 

The Periodic Labour Force Survey data (PLFS) is the main source of data on workers in the country. It is a household survey which probes the members of their household about the usual principal activity and subsidiary activity of the household members. The principal activity status of a person is that activity where he/she is engaged for a relatively longer period of the year (183 days and above). On the other hand, the subsidiary status is where the person is engaged for relatively lesser number of days (>30 days and <183 days). One of the limitations of PLFS is that it is unable to capture the number of seasonal migrant workers. Its unit of enumeration is the household, and it includes only those household members who have been continuously staying in the house for at least six months. This could be one of the reasons for some handloom workers getting excluded from PLFS and its undercounting the number of workers.

The PLFS measures gives estimates of workers at the National Industrial Classification (NIC) at 5-digit and the National Classification of Occupations (NCO) at 3-digit level. When one analyses the data from the PLFS, using NIC code at the 4–digit level (NIC code 1312, weaving of textiles) and the NCO code at the 3–digit level (731), one finds that there were only 14.5 lakh weavers in the country. Of this, 97.3 per cent were engaged in the sector as principal workers and 2.7 per cent were engaged as subsidiary workers. Further, one is unable to distinguish between power loom and handloom weavers because the data are at the NCO 3-digit level, which is the same for both types of workers. The NCO 2015–16 assigns the 8–digit code, 7318.5800 to a handloom weaver and 7318.5500 as a power loom weaver. The PLFS indicates that the number of handloom weavers were much smaller than the Handloom Census.

Then one looks at the available Enterprise Survey data. The Annual Survey of Industries (ASI) and the ASUSE (Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises) data are available for both handloom and power loom sub-sectors. The ASI data accounts for organised workforce in textile weaving sector and ASUSE data accounts for unorganised workforce. The ASI and ASUSE Surveys ask firms about their workers, but it is not mapped to occupations. The two databases combined shows that there were 13.8 lakh weavers in the country. Again, these two surveys also indicate a far lower number of handloom weavers than the Handloom Census.

Thus, we see that differences in methodologies are yielding different numbers. So, which is a more reliable measure – the Handloom Census or the PLFS or the ASI/ASUSE?   

The differences in number throw challenges for policymakers, as several policies are designed based on these data. Therefore, policymakers are recommended to conduct a pilot using different methodologies to estimate number of workers and assess which methodology yields a more precise number. They may also adopt the usage of NCO 8–digit code.

Disclaimer from the Authors: Views are personal and do not reflect that of NCAER.