Anakaputhur weaving cluster awaits model village

For the makers of the shawl based out of Anakaputhur, a suburb in Chennai, that gesture by the country’s leader was an attempt to showcase their innovation

“There are more than 100 weavers in the Anakaputhur cluster. But what sets them apart is that they have been spearheading an eco-friendly textile initiative involving natural fibres for more than a decade now. 

In an interaction with DT Next, C Sekar, president of the Anakaputhur Natural Fibres Association said the initiative has been a conscious effort to give an eco-friendly thrust to the handloom sector. 

“Our weavers are predominantly women. The initiative offers a huge scope for women entrepreneurship,” he said. Stating that a long-standing proposal for setting up a model village in Anakaputhur is yet to take off, Sekar said, “Now, we have been making ends meet by advertising on social networking sites and through our own website. But, our resources can be put to its best use if our project is done on a largescale basis.” 

Many of their products like footwear, baskets and bags made of palm leaves, sarees woven from bamboo, banana fibre and herbal combination of dyes are a huge hit among customers abroad. 

Sekar said, “We have a website through which customers from Singapore, Malaysia and the United States get in touch with us.” The sarees which are in banana and bamboo varieties are priced between Rs 2,000 and Rs 4,500 depending on the fabric used, namely cotton and silk. The products have drawn the attention of experts at the National Research Centre for Banana in Tiruchy. 

Sekar said, “They have asked us to train other people to tap the huge market potential for products made of banana. However, we are ourselves not yet firmly established in the market and it is only after that can we train more people.”