THE Indian Textile Industry is one of the oldest industries in our economy dating back several centuries. It is still the second largest employer after agriculture, providing employment to over 4.5 crore people directly and 6 crore people indirectly. These include manufacturers, suppliers, wholesalers and exporters of cotton textiles, handlooms, power looms and woollen, silk, jute textiles as well as those engaged in the manufacturing of textile machinery and equipment and raw materials, delivery of finished textiles, fabrics and garments.

While yarn is produced in spinning mills, fabrics are predominately produced in power looms and handlooms and small portions in the composite mills. The textiles sector indirectly contributes around 5 per cent, and directly about 2.2 per cent to the GDP. Its share in the GDP of manufacturing sector was 12.2 per cent during 2017-18 as per the National Accounts Statistics, 2018.

The Indian textile industry contributes to 7 per cent of the industry output (in value terms) and around 15 per cent to India’s export earnings. The trade of textile and clothing had a share of 5.38 per cent in India’s total trade during 2019-20.

The Indian textile industry is one of the largest in the world with a large raw material base, in terms of cotton and manufacturing strength across the value chain. The uniqueness of the industry lies in the hand-woven sector as well as the capital intensive mill sector. As per the Annual Report 2017-18 of the ministry of textiles, the mill sector, with 3,400 textile mills having installed capacity of more than 50 million spindles and 8,42,000 rotors is the second largest in the world. Traditional sectors like handlooms, handicrafts and small scale power-loom units are biggest source of employment to millions of people in rural and semi-urban area.

According to the Annual Survey of Industries of  2016-2018, there are 26,97,123 persons employed/engaged in the textile and wearing apparel sector out of the 1,49,11,189 workers engaged in the  entire organised manufacturing sector. That means the textiles workers constitute 18.09 per cent of total workforce engaged in the manufacturing sector of our country. In the mill sector alone, around one million workers are working.

The decentralised power loom sector is one of the most important segments of the textile industry in terms of fabric production and employment. It provides employment to 44.18 lakh persons as per M/S Nielsen baseline powerloom survey conducted during the year 2013.  But data of the ministry of textiles shows that around 62.78 lakh workers are employed in 2015-16 f. More than 60 per cent of fabric meant for export is sourced from powe loom sector. The readymade garments and home textile sector are heavily dependent on the powerloom sector to meet their fabric requirement.

There are approximately 27.01 lakh registered powerlooms in the country as on October 31, 2017. The unregistered powerlooms may also be in the equal number. It is mostly concentrated in Maharashtra, Tamilnadu and Gujarat.  The technological level of this sector varies from plain looms to high tech shuttleless looms. There are approximately 1.50 lakh shuttleless looms in this sector.

One estimate says that Maharashtra has 13 lakh powerlooms i.e., around 50 per cent of our total powerlooms in the country. It is located in the diverse geographical area like Biwandi in Thane district, Solapur, Ichalkaranji in Kolhapur district, Malegaon in Nasik district and Sangli.

The trade union movement in textiles has a glorious history in the country’s freedom struggle. Such industry with such huge workforce is beset with many problems. The workers are mostly in acute precarious working conditions. CITU has decided to intensify its trade union work among these workers. Accordingly, CITU Centre took the initiative and had deliberations with concerned workers’ union leadership twice where it was decided to hold a national convention at Coimbatore.  

Accordingly, the National Convention of Textile and Powerloom Workers was held at Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, on May 17, 2022. The convention was started with flag hoisting by Hemalata, president of CITU. The open inaugural session was attended by five hundred workers including the delegates.  C Padmanabhan, state president of Taminadu Textile Workers Federation and chairman of the reception committee welcomed the gathering.  A K Padmanabhan, vice-president, CITU inaugurated the convention. CITU state general secretary G Sukumaran and  P R Natarajan, MP greeted the convention.

241 delegates from ten states – Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, West Bengal and Puducherry – participated in the convention. About 113 delegates from the organised spinning mills sector and 120 delegates from decentralised powerloom sector, participated in the convention. 14 delegates participated in the discussions on the draft report presented by Karumalaiyan, secretary, CITU. The charter of demands and the tasks proposed were unanimously adopted. The convention unanimously decided to campaign on the charter of demands and called for country-wide demonstration on June 15, 2022 by observing the same as “Save the Textile Industry; Save the Workers”.

A 28-member national coordination committee of textile mills and powerloom workers consisting was formed with R Karumalaiyan as convenor.