In the Khanapara area of Guwahati, a campaign was initiated by the state’s Handloom and Textiles Department to curb the sale of power loom made gamosas, referred to as “gummosis”, due to complaints that business owners were misrepresenting machine produced gamosas as authentic handloom gamosas. As part of this campaign, the Department of Handloom and Textiles dispatched officials to various shops suspected of selling power loom gummosis and collected samples for verification at a total of 13 different shops. In recent years, the market has been saturated with power loom made gamosas which have led shop owners to select lower-cost mass-market options instead of traditional handloom gamosas. The handloom weavers who follow traditional methods of producing gamosas have been put at a serious disadvantage due to the excessive competition from the sale of machine-made alternatives.
