Women of Palanpur still turn the wheel

Miss Palanpur is famous for many reasons. But on the eve of the Independence Day if one takes a trip down the memory lane, it is heart-warming to know that from a yarn importer to second largest textile exporter, the journey for India has been quite momentous and daunting.

The story began in a small place called Palanpur in Gujarat in 1915. Since then, the women force spearheaded the growth from behind the scenes weaving, knitting, tailoring among others for India Inc 24 x 7.

In Mahatma Gandhi’s book, “The story of my experiments with truth, he writes, “I wear this form of swadeshi, because through it I can provide work to the semi-starved, semi-employed women of India. My idea is to get these women to spin yarn, and to clothe the people of India with khadi woven out of it. I do not know how far this movement would succeed, but I have full faith in it.” Nearly a century later his predictions and will power has certainly worked its way. Close to 35m people are today directly employed by the textile industry, the second largest after agriculture. Major part of the textile work force are women.

Call it the height of serendipity, we are today exporting to the very nations from whom we imported in the past. Not to mention some Indian firms are increasingly buying firms from those countries. Take for instance the yarn which used to be imported from the UK a century back. At that point in time, all the fine cloth woven by the weavers were from foreign yarn since the Indian yarn were of low counts.

But today, we use the same low count yarn to manufacture towels, which are exported to the UK among others. The next time Maria Sharapova takes a break from a set, it would be the Indian towel she would reach to. Welspun India recently bought Christy’s, an official supplier of towels to Wimbledon. GHCL made acquisitions of textile firms in UK, Romania and US.

Cut back to the Palanpur story. When Gandhiji returned to India from South Africa, he had not seen a single spinning wheel. At that time, he came across a weaving expert at Palanpur which was among the first attempts towards the ‘Swadeshi’ movement.

The person taught him how to weave which were among the first skills sets that the Sabarmati Ashram dwellers mastered. The art in the textile business being confined to women, massive search was on to get women with good skill sets.

In 1917, he discovered a lady, Gangabehn Majmudar, a widow, whom he met at a conference. She found the spinning wheel for the ashram, in Vijapur in Baroda.

It didn’t end with that: she also found the weavers to weave the yarn that was spun in Vijapur, and soon Vijapur khadi gained for itself. To fire swadeshi instincts, he resolved to wear only Indian made dhotis, which created a problem for him once. Coarse khadi manufactured in the ashram and at Vijapur was only 30 inches in width. He gave notice to Gangabehn to provide a khadi dhoti of 45 inches width within a month. Luckily, a pair of khadi dhotis of 45 inches were made and Gandhi felt relieved.

The swadeshi revolution of that time resembles to many extents the spirit of current times. Women workers in textile companies exude the same rigour and dedication today as years before. Describing another women named Gangabehn, Gandhiji adds:

“When this unlettered lady plies at her loom. She become so lost in it that it is difficult to draw her eyes off her beloved loom.” Today, there are close to five textile companies with a head count of 10,000 or even more. Gokaldas Exports, Raymond, Century Textiles, Mahavir Spinning, Rajasthan Spinning and Welspun India are among major recruiters. Post-dismantling of quotas, India has taken the second place in global trade after China. As per reports, Indian textile exports are estimated to grow from $14bn to $50bn by ’10.

Its players are giving cut throat competition to textile players of China, Hong Kong, Turkey, Mexico, Romania and Bangladesh. Lower wage costs are acting as competitive advantage for Indian textile companies across the value chain.

Many private labels like Adidas, Reebok, Tommy Hilfiger are reaching out to Indian companies to leverage on low costs. There have been handful of acquisitions abroad by GHCL, another textile manufacturer. Women have unique skill sets in their armour.

This is in the arena of knitting, weaving and tailoring, among others. The textile clusters of Tirupur, Coimbatore, Bangalore, Gujarat, Punjab have women behind the scenes chalking growth stories for India Inc. It’s time we say kudos to miss Palanpurs.