Reviving Khadi in India
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BACKGROUND NOTE
Khadi has its roots in the freedom struggle of India. Khadi, the home
spun cloth was central to Gandhi's vision of self- reliance and self- rule.
Gandhi wanted Indians to spin their own cotton thread and to weave Khadi,
thereby, providing employment to many Indians and contributing to the
country's self-sufficiency. Post independence, Khadi fabrics were woven on
handlooms from cotton, silk, and woollen yarn, which were hand-spun.
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The production of Khadi is labour intensive as the
weaving has to be done manually. The pure cotton collected from cotton
farms is first ginned and bales are made. These bales are then converted
into rowings and distributed to different spinning units. In the
spinning units, the cotton fibre is manually converted into yarn using
charkas[4]. The yarn is then woven into fabric using handlooms.
During the post-independence era, Indian industrialists set up capital
intensive textile mills. Due to mass production, these mills could offer
fine cloth at lower prices. Synthetic material like polyester was
available at a very low price compared to Khadi. Thus despite all policy
incentives to popularize Khadi, people bought machine made textiles. |
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In order to popularize khadi among the masses, in 1957, the
government set up the KVIC. It had the following broad objectives:
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The social objective of providing employment
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The economic objective of producing saleable
articles, and
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The wider objective of creating self-reliance
amongst the poor and developing a strong rural community spirit
Besides Khadi, KVIC also dealt with other products such
as toilet soaps, detergents, honey, pickles, spices, incense sticks,
handmade paper, leather, ceramics, and many other agro-based products (Refer
Exhibit 1 for product range of KVIC). To keep the spirit of Khadi alive and
promote it as a national fabric, KVIC has set up many outlets across India.
As a result thousands of spinners, who wove the fabric could sell their
output through the vast network of KVIC retail outlets. However, the
situation did not improve much. The poor quality of garments sold through
the KVIC outlets, resulted in customers' dissatisfaction. People even
complained that the quality of Khadi had deteriorated and hence it faded
easily.
In the 1990s, very few people bought Khadi. Khadi was
bought only during the annual discount sale. Synthetic material was quickly
replacing the hand made fabric. People who had got used to the high quality
of imported materials, felt that Khadi was rough and coarse and associated
it with shapeless kurtas[5], mostly worn by politicians. And therefore, in
spite of the GoI's financial assistance to thousands of traditional spinners
in India, they had tough time selling their product.
REVIVING KHADI : FROM FREEDOM FABRIC TO FASHION FABRIC
GOVERNMENT SUPPORT TO KHADI
TABLE II - SHARE OF KHADI IN THE TOTAL PRODUCTION AT KVIC
FUTURE OF KHADI
EXHIBIT I - PRODUCT RANGE OF KVIC
ADDITIONAL READINGS & REFERENCES
[4] Charka is the Indian version
of the spinning wheel.
[5] Kurta is a loose fitting shirt.
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