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Clothes have been in use since the dawn of humankind. Earlier, men used animal skin and plant leaves to cover themselves. Then, they advanced, and so did their clothes. Finally, they learned the glorious art of weaving cloth from the threads. Over time, the production methods of the final fabric have evolved, and now cloth is mass-produced by the textile industry. Today, the industry is flourishing in India, providing invaluable economic value and employment to thousands of people. Initially started in the coastal areas of Maharashtra and Gujarat, it is now expanded to other parts of the country.
What are fibres?
Every industry requires raw materials to produce finished goods. The same is the case with the textile industry, for which the raw material is fibre. Fibres can be classified into two categories – natural and synthetic based on their source. Natural fibres are obtained from plants or animals. Examples are cotton, jute, wool, silk, etc. On the other hand, synthetic or manufactured fibres like rayon, nylon, polyester, etc., are synthesised in a lab.
History of the cotton textile industry
Cotton, sourced from plants, is one of the most widely available natural fibres globally. Hence, it has been used for a long time to produce cloth. Before the industrial revolution in the mid-1800s, the people used hand-spinning weaving techniques to produce cotton cloth. India was a popular destination for buying hand-spun and hand-woven clothes. Different parts of India offered different things, such as Muslin coming from Dhaka, Calicos from Calcutta, Chintzes of Masulipatnam, and gold-wrought cotton from Burhanpur, Surat, and Vadodara. It was a superb skill, which was soon replaced by power looms.
Producing hand-made cloth was expensive and difficult to scale quickly. Hence, the textile mills of the Western countries were providing direct competition to our hand-weaving industry by producing cheap and good quality clothes promptly. Therefore, the Indian industry needed to survive by setting up mechanised mills.
The mechanisation of the cotton textile industry in India
The first successful textile power loom was set up in Mumbai in 1854 because the city offered a warm & humid climate, a shipping port for facilitating imports, plenty of raw material, and skilled labour. For setting up a cotton textile plant, a humid environment is required, due to which the initial industries were majorly set up in Maharashtra and Gujarat.
However, technological advancement has made it possible to artificially create humidity anywhere, allowing textile mills to be set up in other parts. As a result, Mumbai, Kolkata, Coimbatore, Kanpur, Puducherry, Chennai, Ludhiana, Ahmedabad, and Panipat are renowned textile industry centres.
Ahmedabad – Important Centre for the Indian Textile Industry
Ahmedabad is called the ‘Manchester of India’ because it is the second-largest textile industrial city in the country. Ahmedabad offers benefits due to proximity to cotton-growing areas, an ideal humid climate for weaving, a flat terrain that allows easy setting up of mills, and well-developed transport infrastructure facilitating cloth transportation to different cities. The city has access to skilled and semi-skilled labour. There is a port that allows for textile export and import.
However, the city’s textile industry has been struggling for the past few years owing to increased competition by other states and not much improvement in textile engineering processes.
Osaka – The star of the Textile Industry of Japan
The ‘Manchester of Japan’, Osaka is Japan’s important textile industrial centre. Osaka offers geographical benefits like a warm, humid climate and plain terrain that allows the setting up of textile engineering plants. In addition, the city is blessed by the proximity to the river Yodo, which provides sufficient water to the textile mills. It also has access to cheap labour.
The city has ports that allow importing raw materials as the city entirely relies on imports from other countries for textile raw materials. It manufactures the cloth and then exports the final goods. The textile export is a lucrative market due to low prices and good quality products.
However, the threat of replacement by other industries looms over it.
Conclusion
Once produced by hand, textiles are now majorly produced by mechanised processes and advanced mill equipment. India was once a leading country in the production of hand-woven cotton clothes. However, due to the advancement in textile engineering, it faced direct competition with textile producers of western countries. It paved the way for the establishment of power looms in the Western states of India. To this day, Ahmedabad remains a pioneer of this industry, but it is not the only city that can produce and export textiles anymore. Several plants have been set up across the different cities, making our textile export arm stronger. We can draw parallels between Ahmedabad in India and Osaka in Japan.
