Till late 60s more than eighty textile mills belched smoke from their chimneys in Ahmedabad and their hooters shrilled the air at specified times announcing the change over of the shifts. These textile mills of Ahmedabad produced over 25 per cent of the cloth produced in India. In fact the economy of Ahmedabad saw its pink because of these textile mills. The distribution of bonus by the textile mills in Ahmedabad prior to Diwali made the markets glitter and throbbing with crowds for Diwali purchases. So much of the influence of the organised textile sector in Ahmedabad that even the trade union leaders who led the textile workers through their recognised union Majoor Mahajan like Gulzarilal Nanda, Shyamaprasad Vasavda and Arvind Buch were highly respected by the rulers those be both at the centre as well as the state level. It was an unwritten tradition for quite some time that the labour ministry at centre as well as in the state of Gujarat was headed by a representative of Majoor Mahaj an. This was the time when the textile manufacturing activity was dominated by a composite textile mill which had under one roof all the activities like spinning, weaving, processing and marketing.

The post 1960 era and especially the last two decades of the 20th Century saw a marked shift in this pattern. Today the decentralised powerloom sector has emerged as a major cloth producing sector in India. Going by the information available as of 31st March 2006 over 4.3 lakh powerloom units were in operation with a total capacity of over 19 lakh powerlooms weaving the web and weft. Incidentally this number is almost equal to half of the total number of powerlooms operating in the world (47%)! This sector has already become the backbone of the Indian textile industry. Giving its dimension Arun Jariwala, Chairman, Surat Art Silk and Cloth Manufacturing Association provides some interesting information highlighting the importance of this sector. I do not want to get into the repetition of this information already covered in a very lucid and interesting manner by Jariwala in his article providing an overview of powerloom sector in India. It could only be said that this sector has travelled a long way from the first loom set up in 1904 at Ichalkaranji in Maharashtra. The other day I was at Surat on the occasion of Yarn Expo 2006. The production figures by powerlooms at Surat were mind boggling at 2.6 crore meter of cloth per day! Sitting on the dais I calculated this figure which worked out to be 18 km of cloth per minute produced by powerlooms in Surat!! My turn came after about 70 minutes the function started and I said that during this intervening period the Surat powerlooms must have produced 1260 km of cloth. This was roughly five times the distance between Surat and Bombay! And Surat is not the only centre. Eighty per cent of the loomage is today concentrated in the three states viz. Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra with centres like Bhivandi doting the map.

As a sector powerlooms provide direct employment to about 10 million people whereas more than 50 million derive their livelihood from the activities connected with this sector. The present level of fabric production by this sector is around 30 billion sq. meter which is roughly over 60 per cent of the total fabric produced in India. This figure is likely to touch 40 billion sq. meters by 2015. On export front powerlooms contribute more than 40 per cent of the cloth in general and over 90 per cent of the cloth that goes in garment exports. This is perhaps an answer to those who may like to raise some doubts about the quality of the production in this sector. In fact this is one sector where economy of scale really does not seem to be an advantage unlike in other sectors. On the other hand low overheads and wage linked production incentives make this sector highly competitive in comparison with the organized sector. This is perhaps the reason why the composite organised sector mill has become a monumental disadvantage and its limitation to adopt to the situation is perhaps the reason why it has lost into the race. As a result of this the composite organised sector textile mills are few and far to find and their share in the overall cloth production has dwindled to around 5 per cent!

With so much said in favour of powerlooms let them also understand that today this sector which claims to have around 20 lakh powerlooms could barely boast of 30000 high-tech looms. The initiative taken by the textile ministry through TUFS as well as SITPs does not seem to be all that friendly to this sector. On a presumption which appears to be highly optimistic that all the 26 textile parks approved by the central government will become operative the total strength of high technology weaving machines is expected to touch 75000. Still a long way to go if India wants to dramatically improve its current share of around 3 per cent of world textile trade in the coming years. "The TUFS is stated to be not all that friendly to the powerloom sector" says Dhanpal Tare, Chairman, Indian Powerloom Federation "credit linked cash subsidy scheme is more attractive. To make it more friendly, subsidy amount should be raised to 30 per cent and ceiling should be raised to Rs.5 crore". Another problem perhaps of this sector is that almost around 19 lakh powerlooms are working on historic technology of 19th century. There are indigenous innovations improving upon their speed and performance however it is a long way to go. An innovative scheme which helps improving the speed of the loom and also the quality of the cloth output through fitting of contraptions approved by agency like BITRA needs to be specially designed for the powerloom sector to keep its advantage of low capital cost intact. At the same time the power loom sector also will have to learn to switch over to high-tech production techniques especially to produce the international quality cloth at competitive cost. The challenge is tough but then in the present era of globalisation the buzz word would always be quality at a competitive price. Let powerloom sector adopt this mantra. Ultimately it would be to their advantage.