How did East India Company ensure regular supply of cotton and silk goods from Indian weavers? Explain.

(a) Before establishing political power, the East India Company had found it difficult to ensure regular supply of goods for exports due to tough competition with the French, Dutch, Portuguese and local traders. The weaver and the supply merchants used to sell the produce to the best buyer. But once the company established political power, it could assert a monopoly right to trade. Therefore, the East India company took the following steps:
(l) It appointed a paid servant called the gomastha to supervise weavers, collect supplies, and examine the quality of cloth.
(ii) It prevented Company weaver from dealing with other buyers by system of advances because the weavers who took loans had to hand over the cloth they produced to the gomastha.
(b) Results : The condition of weavers became bad. They took advances to earn more. In the process they had to devote all their time to weaving and had to lease out their small plots of land’ The weavers had to sell their cloth only to the Company. They could not bargain” The prices they got were low and the advances tied them to the Company. At many places weavers deserted villages and migrated to other villages. Some took to agricultural labour