It is a small town between the ghats on the western coast of India. Located about 425 km south of Kolhapur in Maharashtra, few would have heard of Ichalkaranji, and fewer still would have visited it. Those who live here — generally of modest means and numbering around three lakh — proudly refer to its reputation as the ‘Manchester of India’, although they themselves may not know where or what Manchester is.
Ichalkaranji is a town of contrasts. While most of its residents are poor workers eking out a living in textile mills, it is also home to the super rich and notches one of the highest per capita incomes in India. In fact, it could be deemed one of India’s premier textile hubs — producing cloth not just for domestic markets but also Italian and French companies. The sugar industry and the barons controlling it are also located in this region, through which criss-crosses the Panchganga river.
Today, the town’s cloth is woven on power looms. As part of a princely State it had come under the administration of Shrimant Narayanrao Babasaheb Ghorpade, who is credited with setting up a power loom here — possibly the first of its kind in India. But weaving has a much older association with the town, as ‘ichalkaranji’ is a term traditionally used for weft threads.
Until recently, the town mainly produced
Made to order
Large spindles of raw yarn lie in the outer room of one of the textile mills I visited. Mahesh, one of the floor managers, said, “This raw yarn is wound around a large spindle in accordance with the colour and design of the end product. This is the warp of the textile. The weft consists of bundles of thread that are positioned on bobbins and which flit in and out of the warp to create the desired design. Since the entire raw material belongs to the buyer, the finished product is unique and follows the design given by them.”
The room where the looms are installed explodes with noise as the movable parts of the machine scurry to and fro on steel blades. They produce tremendous heat in the process. While the hall itself is air-conditioned, there are valves on the ground to let the hot air escape outside.
To the layperson the enormous piles of fabric lying on the floor would seem ready for the wearer, but Mahesh pointed out that it was not finished fabric. “The cloth has to go through many processes before it can be used to make a garment,” he said, escorting me to an adjoining building where a small unit carried out the finishing processes.
“Most of our commissioned fabric is not finished here — it is sent to different places such as Bhilwara and Nasik for that. Here we do the finishing for dhotis , saris and plain cotton fabric. Even this is a commissioned job,” he said, adding, “There are very few merchants who produce their own cloth. The majority work on assignments, like we do.”
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In the processing unit for saris and dhotis that I visited the cloth was being bleached, starched and then passed through a hot press to dry.
A huge boiler at the entrance supplied the heat within. Until this point all the activity was handled by men.
Women at work
If the fabric goes as yardage it is loaded on to trolleys, awaiting packaging. If, however, it has to be made into dhotis or towels they have to be cut into the right sizes — a task done predominantly by women.
“We get the job when the men are not available. If the men are free, our employers prefer them because they are faster,” said Meenakshi, a local textile worker. The women here work in pairs. While one holds the edge, the other runs a pair of scissors along the breadth of the fabric. For each such cut they get paid 40-50 paise. “We usually manage to cut 600-700 pieces a day,” said Meenakshi. Her partner — who happened to be her mother-in-law — clarified, “That count is valid if it is thin towels. Thicker cloth takes longer and we cut fewer pieces.” The payment, though, remains the same. She also said that workers have to come in pairs, as otherwise they will not get the job.
Women are mainly employed at this stage, as the work preceding it is labour-intensive and involves excessive exposure to heat. But even though most of the units are run by men, some like the Kallappanna Awade Ichalkaranji Sahakari Cooperative provide financial support for women’s self-help groups.
Aware of the rather perilous status of the textile industry, the Government has attempted to support it. Shailaja is among the few women entrepreneurs in this field after setting up a textile unit recently. “There are many incentives. We get tax subsidies from the Government and can also make use of training programmes; but support for women entrepreneurs is still slow in coming. The risk is in getting the first order. After that the rest follows in line. But all this is not easy for a woman,” she says.
In the 2011-12 Budget the then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had allotted Rs 70 crore for the power looms in this town. “Ichalkaranji is progressing fast. Indian textile industry operates largely in the form of clusters — with roughly 70 textile clusters producing 80 per cent of the country’s total textiles,” said Prakash Awade, a former minister of textiles in the Maharashtra government. He is also on the verge of setting up a garment production cluster for women entrepreneurs.
Garments fetch a higher price than textiles. As the preference for readymade garments grows, the textile giants of Ichalkaranji are eager to expand into the garment sector. That will fetch the town even greater profits, promising to change its face forever.
© Women’s Feature Service