Use of short staple cotton and single charkha which is completely hand made is what
ponduru khadi is known for.
Ponduru town has about 180 to 200 looms and the surrounding villages have about 150.
Each loom needs 4 to 6 people working. It also has about 11 active societies which market
through APCO but they also do their own marketing.
The products are shirting material, kanduvas, dhotis etc. Cotton is bought and processed by
hand locally through an elaborate process. Price of a metre could range between ₹ 350 to
850 and for even finer quality between ₹ 1500 to 2600.
Weavers service centres, is an important central Govt organisation that caters to nearly all
departments of weaving. Machavaram and department of handloom and textiles,
Mangalagiri are facilitators for the weaver community in Andhra Pradesh as is with the rest
of India.
There are several weavers and master weavers and one of them is N. Sankar Rao of Sri
Gayatri Ponduru Khaddar.
This is a group of 10 weaver families managed by Nalla Sankar Rao in Ponduru which is
about 30 kms from Srikakulam. He and his family belong to a traditional weaver community
to which his parents and grandparents too were part of. Currently having a weaver ID
enables them to draw government benefits as well.
He is the only person of his group who does the marketing and travelling to places. He has
about 50 certificates of participation in various government events. Recently some shops
have been allocated to societies and few like himself.
Contact:
N Sankar Rao
9118474849
Below link is a well covered program on Ponduru khadi by TV 10. The process has 8 stages
after purchase of quality cotton. This video is mostly on AFKK Sangam (Andhra Fine Khadi
Karmika Sangam)
Separating seed from the cotton fibre is done by a special jawbone of valuga fish which is
indigenous to this place. Below is another link to this topic.
