Powerloom Industry and Urban Economic Transformation in Mau City: An Analysis of Employment, Income Generation, and Local Industrial Development

Abstract

Mau is a well-known weaving centre in eastern Uttar Pradesh where household skills, powerloom production and small enterprise coexist with trading in textiles. This paper focuses on the powerloom economy and urban economic transformation in terms of employment, income and industrial policies as well as cluster growth. Due to the lack of reliable city-level production and wage data, the paper has chosen to use validated government sources and recent publications instead of developing fictitious firm data. In a 2024 Ministry of Textiles parliamentary reply, it was reported that during the year 2023-24, there were 230 weavers in the Mau region with 164 powerloom weavers and 66 handloom weavers with the first tranche of Rs 305.560 Lakhs. Of these beneficiaries, 71.3% were powerloom weavers, which approximates the Uttar Pradesh situation where over 5 lakh powerloom weavers are compared to 1.99 lakh handloom weavers. The paper argues that the transformation in Mau is more attributable to small scale dense production and weaving combined with market linkages and supporting enterprise and government sponsored modernisation, than large factory-based industrialization. The challenge is to support the flexible local networks structuring employment in order to maintain productivity and income.