For two decades, the young people of Sualkuchi did what young people across rural
India do — they left. The looms their grandparents built fell quiet, one house at a
time.
The town on the Brahmaputra had woven muga silk for centuries. But weaving paid little when
the only buyers were a handful of local traders, and the city promised wages a loom could
never match. By 2019, more than half the working looms in the cluster had stopped.