Traditional Textiles In Tatters

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: The traditional Indian textile industry has been on the decline. The textile centres like Ahmedabad and Mumbai have seen the textile mills and textile labour in a rigor mortis state. This does not spell well for the once dominant textile industry in the manufacturing sector of the Indian industry. The worst blow to the textile industry’s fortunes was dealt when the ill-timed and unfortunate textile mills strike in 1981 in Mumbai fizzled out to the detriment of the textile labour. Now the textile magnates, builders, politicians and bureaucrats are busy sharing the spoils from the sale of textile land even as lakhs of textile workers and their families have been out on the limb. Darryl D’Monte’s book, Ripping The Fabric: The Decline Of Mumbai And Its Mills, shows how the decline of Mumbai began with the decline of the textile mills and its serious implications for the national economy.

Now comes Jan Breman’s account of the decline of textile labour class in Ahmedabad, the leading textile centre in India. The present study is a product of his deep interest in the changing condition of labour in the lower echelons of the rural and urban economy of Gujarat. The lopsided politics has kept out the interest of labour except to use it as vote bank at the election time. The process of informalisation of labour has become irreversible with serious implications for the Gujarat economy as well as the national economy. As Mr Breman points out, “The forced exit of large numbers of workers from the composite textile mills in Ahmedabad struck me as a dramatic instance of the turning tide between capital and labour.” The massive retrenchment that began in 1970s has resulted in the job loss of 1,25,000 workers. Most of them have been forced to eke out a living in the informal sector of the city’s economy. Their fate is similar to that of the Mumbai textile workers. In fact not many have cared to look into the plight of the jobless textile workers and their families. Mr Breman’ book is different from most studies on textile industry in that ‘... rather than dealing with the how and why of the cut in mill production and the immediate shock of job loss, it zooms in on the subsequent fate of the sacked workforce.”