The Voice of Fashion
The Tiruppur Trial
India’s largest knitwear manufacturing hub is crippled by monetary losses with lakhs of unpaid workers in the shadow of uncertainty
Europe and the United States constituted, until very recently, 70 per cent of the market for the knitwear export industry located in Tiruppur and surrounding areas in the Coimbatore region of Tamil Nadu. The apparel export hub industrially profiled under Medium and Small Scale (MSME) industries employs six lakh workers directly in different hierarchies between small, medium and large-scale enterprises. It also gives small jobs to about two lakh indirect workers—recruited from the poor population in nearby villages. A majority earn through weekly wages.
The industry has been hit on multiple counts in the last few years. Exports flattened after 2017, cheaper, good quality knitwear supplies are on offer to Western markets from Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar (China too) and other countries (modelled on the sweatshop economy) and the fallouts of demonetisation and GST.
Now, with the US and European Union severely ailing in the wake of the novel Coronavirus, retail orders, supply chains and trade between countries is a mass of broken wires. Like many other industries across the spectrum, Tiruppur’s garment industry is crippled.
Garment factory workers in the tailoring section of a textile production unit in Tiruppur, Tamil Nadu, India’s largest knitwear manufacturing hub.
That’s not how grim it sounded in mid-December last year when Wuhan was beginning to wake up to the crushing enormity of the virus. Shipments for previous orders had left Tiruppur for their European destinations, recounts B Raja Shanmugham, president of the Tiruppur Export Association (TEA). By the time these shipments reached different countries, trade routes had begun to clog up. “In some countries, some parts of the merchandise were put out for sale while the rest remained boxed and untouched,” says Shanmugham, adding that whatever else was sent later in February remains practically unopened by Western brands. Payments stand refused or stalled; merchandise unopened. “Between December 2019 to February 2020, Tiruppur exports incurred a loss of ₹6000 and the unshipped shipments of March add another ₹2500 crore to that burden of losses,” says Shanmugham.
A year back, The Hindu had reported a story on this industry’s stresses citing “thinning margins, decline overseas demand and relatively high labour costs.” The story reported that the industry worth ₹46,000 crore annually was at a complex crossroads.
Even domestic buying for Tiruppur goods has been falling as consumer needs have shifted in India. Assessing new investments, technological upgrades, improving quality and tapping unexplored markets, the TEA had then projected the annual worth to increase to ₹100,000 crores by 2020.
That is not to be.
Shops in Tiruppur sell filament, dyed yarn, zips, buttons, laces, grey material, embroideries.
The work force, which operates in Tiruppur lanes and bylanes, in small and big garment units, some airy and clean, others suffocatingly congested is a mix of locals from villages and migrants from as far as West Bengal and Odisha.
Last July, in Tiruppur to explore the exploitation of female garment workers as an exploration of a Thomas Reuters article, I visited many garment factories. Masks, now a part of Current Normal, did not seem exceptional in these factories, I noticed. Flying fragments and thread tangles threads from cut knitwear fabric that led to allergies, the pungent smell of machine dyed and stored fabric, handling of machines, dangers of working in close proximity with hundreds of others—made masks a logical, even wise choice. Such factories in developing nations are routinely visited by inspection teams for social compliance audits of local or international brands. So canteens, crèches, fire exits, fire extinguishers, masks…are mandated.
Now, when I try to import that visual into my mind of cramped factory spaces with hundreds of sewing machines working frantically, it is hard to comprehend how after COVID-19, these work places can be revitalised and set back on track.
Shanmugham says factory owners have paid all workers due wages until their last working day before the lockdown. He hopes the government rescue and offer monetary aid for the lockdown month to the lakhs of migrants trapped in the city. “The Telangana and Odisha governments are working collaboratively on relief packages and till then, migrant workers have been put in hostels and are being looked after,” he adds. Other traders add that unless the industry earns, it cannot pay—the circularity of money is the only way to survive.
However, as one trader who declined to be quoted said, these stranded workers may get meals but are put in “hostels”, in conditions–with small, shared rooms and common toilets for dozens of people. This is in complete contradiction with current safety guidelines.
The workforce comprises locals from nearby villages and migrants from as far as West Bengal and Odisha.
Some days back, the union minister of textiles Smriti Z Irani put out a persuasively argued video plea to nations trading with India to practice “commerce with compassion” The actual relief package for those deserving of this compassion is awaited.
New remedies will lead to paradoxical realities. Workers need to be sustained but can they be asked to produce “better quality” garments while paid lower wages? Where will investment for upgraded technology come from? What about the domestic market? Once retail reopens, brands and design houses will take weeks to assess how to align inventory, open up warehouses releasing existing, unsold stock before ordering the next round of consignments. There is no clarity when Europe and the US will resume imports from Tiruppur.
Among solutions, the TEA wants to convey to the government to make payments through the Employment State Insurance (ESI) to those who are cardholders and pay other unemployed, hapless workers through the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana.
April 14, that is tomorrow—when a formal government announcement is expected on the phasing out of the national lockdown for industrial and agricultural sectors—may bring some answers.
Even so, loss will remain a griping truth. The worst malaise being of uncertain or no employment amidst displacement of homes and workplaces for those who knit and stitch for a living.
