CHIRALA: Stating that importance of life skills in handloom industry cannot be measured by any economic indices, Padma Bhushan awardee designer and scenographer Rajiv Sethi said on Monday that reviving the handloom sector is the duty of the society. He said that handloom is a living form of the art that needed to be redesigned its life for survival.Rajiv Sethi was addressing the international conference on handlooms- Chenetha Chetikala Sambaralu in Chirala town of Prakasam district in Andhra Pradesh Sethi said that every person in the society should collectively work for the revival of India’s handlooms as it carries the tangible and intangible heritage of the nation. He expressed concern over the shrinking creative spaces in formal pedagogy pertaining to handlooms industry.Sethi suggested that young artisans in the handlooms should create a pressure group and collectively bargain for a stronger textile policy to keep the industry and the art alive.GS Nair of IIHT, convenor of the session Macherla Mohan Rao, Ravi Kumar Reddy of Reeds, Uzramma of Malkha, Bijker from Maastricht University, Anuradha Reddy from Dr Reddy’s foundation, Annapurna and Mamidipudi Ravindra Vikram spear-headed the panel discussions.The week-long training-cum-awareness conference on handloom sector has been designed into two segments which includes a workshop and a conference for knowledge exchange.Scholars of artisan knowledge from Columbia, Leiden, Berlin and Cambridge Universities attended the conference and participated in the technical sessions.

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