Published Paper Details:

Handloom industry is one of the oldest traditional industries, which is the livelihood for millions of rural artisans in our country. Handloom products are well known for their quality, affordability, durability, availability and artistic work. From the past few years, the handloom industry is facing severe problems like customers preferring other machine-made fabrics over traditional handloom products; tough competition from power looms and other factory produced fabrics. Though the government has taken some major initiatives to support this handloom manufacturing process and introduced schemes for handloom weavers, yet this has not been sufficient to revive their fortunes. The objectives of the study were to assess the awareness of the handloom weavers in Betgeri of Gadag District regarding various aids given by the government, and to find out their satisfaction on utilization of the government aids. Sample size was 100 handloom weavers from Betgeri of Gadag District of Karnataka. Purposive random technique was used to select the samples while data was collected using a structured interview schedule. Salient findings revealed that most of the respondents were aware of the government aids available to them, and they availed the government schemes so that they could keep aside the money they earned by weaving for future emergencies. Most of the respondents (37%) felt that the Weavers Family Pension Scheme by the government was useful.