Handloom weavers in the Northeast region are known for their unique expertise and skill in weaving designs, motifs and traditional dyeing that make handloom products important identity markers of different communities of the region. The household tradition plays a crucial role in the rural economy, with weavers augmenting household income through weaving. Easy access to institutional credit is critical to protect the economic interest of weavers and their livelihood in the modern competitive market ecosystem. The wavers require more institutional credit for mobilising the working capital needed to cater to the rising market demand for their handloom products. The working capital is needed for purchasing yarn, dye, and loom accessories, while institutional credit is also utilised for meeting some of their daily household expenses. Dependence on village moneylenders or non-formal credit lenders pushes them into a debt trap because high interest is levied on the loan amount. The Concessional Credit/Weaver MUDRA scheme under the National Handloom Development Programme implemented by the Ministry of Textiles is an important scheme to protect the weavers from moneylenders and nonformal credit institutions, as it is flexible and meets their credit requirements to ensure that the handloom production activity is cost-effective. The weaver pays 6% interest to the bank, while the government pays the rest. This allows weavers to focus on weaving and producing high-quality products that are in demand in the market and can fetch good prices, without worrying much about repaying the loan interest. Low disbursal of loans under the scheme in the region is a baffling paradox, especially since Assam alone accounts for more than 11 lakh weavers with the number of weavers across the region. The ground reality is reflected by the official data, which highlights that of the total 9211 loans sanctioned under the scheme with a total loan amount to the tune of Rs 69.84 crore for the entire country during 2024-25, only 366 loans were sanctioned for Assam with a loan amount of Rs 2 crore and 42 loans for Manipur with a loan amount of just Rs 21 lakh. As cheap power loom replicas of many traditional handloom products from the region have already reduced the market competitiveness of genuine handloom products, disbursement of MUDRA loans to more weavers from the region is an urgent necessity that goes beyond statistics of annual targets and achievements. The government claims to be focusing on organising a larger number of awareness camps in the region and interacting with handloom weavers for dissemination of information related to scheme benefits. The Ministry of Finance advising all the participating banks to ensure prompt sanctioning and disbursal of loans and to lodge the claims for margin money, interest subvention and credit guarantee fee through the Handloom Weaver Mudra Portal to enhance the scheme's reach and benefits to a greater number of handloom beneficiaries, as informed by the Ministry of Textiles to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour, Textiles and Skill Development, is laudable. Taking such interventions beyond paperwork is crucial to achieve the desired objectives. The initiative calls for reviewing the awareness programmes currently conducted in the region to find out the gaps and undertake corrective measures. Under this scheme, eligible handloom weavers are required to approach participating banks and have to submit the loan application along with one of the documents: Pehchan card issued by the Office of the Development Commissioner, Handloom; yarn passbook; or identity card issued by the state government. While significant progress has been made in the issuance of these identity documents, the primary task of facilitating institutional credit to every eligible weaver who is desperately in need of working capital for the sustainability of handloom activities remains unfinished. Acceptance of the recommendation by the parliamentary panel for consideration of special provisions, including relaxed eligibility parameters and shortened sanctioning procedures for the Northeast region by the central government, is essential to increase loan disbursement of the MYDRA handloom weaver scheme. The committee also made another important observation: that the onus of sanctioning and disbursing the loans has been placed entirely on banks, and recommended the Ministry of Textiles set up a robust institutional mechanism for monitoring the entire process, including an accountability framework or feedback mechanism, to ensure compliance by the lending institutions so that all the eligible handloom weavers in the region as well as in other parts of the country are brought under the coverage of the scheme. As the majority of handloom weavers in the region are women, facilitating easy financial credit to uplift them economically plays a crucial role in women's empowerment through financial self-reliance. It is imperative to strengthen credit disbursal to the weavers of the region in order to transform handloom production from a subsistence level to a commercial scale, effectively transforming traditional weaving activities into an entrepreneurial venture.