India is now a fast emerging market inching to reach half a billion middle income population by 2030. All these factors are good for the Indian textile industry in a long run. Even though the global economic crisis seams to be worsening day-by-day, as long as economies are emerging and growing as those in South and South East Asia, textile industry is here to grow provided it takes competition and innovation seriously. Read below to have an insight of the stand of the Indian Textile Industry in the economy.

Where Does the Indian Textile Industry Stand Now?

A general impression I get talking to the Indian textile industry leaders in the past few days make me understand that the industry is in a pinch. Why so? These are the reasons:

1. Global recession
2. Less export orders due to reductions in inventories by global retail giants like Wal-Mart
3. Price of raw materials like cottons and
4. Infrastructure bottlenecks such as power, particularly in Tamil Nadu.

It has been recently reported that textile exports in 2009-10 period will be equal or could be even lower than the one achieved in 2008-09. In this global financial meltdown situation, what should the Indian textile industry do? In the times of adversity, it is an immediate task for all stake holders to pause for a moment and take stock of the difficulties and chart plans for sustainability and growth of the Indian textile industry.

Road Ahead for the Indian Textile Industry

As the saying goes in the financial sector, it is not advisable to put all eggs in one basket. This is what happened somewhat in the case of the Indian textile industry. With the opening of world markets and the abolition of textile quotas since 2005, there came a negative situation as well. But, hindsight is always 20-20. Indian textile industry should have focused on all major sectors right from fibre to fashion and planned for an organized growth across the supply chain so as to compete with China and even countries such as Pakistan, Vietnam and Thailand. Instead, the industry had put majority of its stock in the spinning sector. This is clearly evident in the utilization of Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme effectively by the spinning sector. Although it is a positive outcome, in my opinion, the industry turned a blind eye on value-adding sectors such as weaving and finishing. Indian powerloom sector, which enables value-addition is a highly unorganized industry and needs major upgradation. Not only India does not have world quality indigenous shuttleless looms, but also investments are not adequate to cope with the quality and quantity to cater to the export market. Technical textiles sector is still in its infancy and a tangible growth will be highly visible by 2035 when the growth in this sector will be exponential. Is there a panacea to the complexities surrounding the India Textile Industry?

Some Solutions for the Growth of Indian Textile Industry

A couple of points given below will give food for thought for all the stake holders in the Indian textile industry:

1. The weak links in the Indian conventional industry such as weaving and finishing have to be strengthened. A major thrust here is to have consolidated efforts by Indian Textile Machinery Manufacturers Association, end-users and the Government to undertake a moonshot and come-up with alternatives to European Machinery, which the weaving sector can afford. This should be doable within the next five years, if dedicated efforts are undertaken with the financial support for R & D by the Government through its various schemes;

2. Inch forward in the non-commodity textile sector, i.e., technical textiles sector from a non crawling phase to at least a crawling industry in the next three years. General awareness on nonwoven and technical sectors has been created with the recent marathon training workshops and conferences such as, "Advances in Textiles, Nonwoven and Technical Textiles", organized for the past five years in Coimbatore by Texas Tech University, USA and those such as the Texcellance and IIT's Technical Textiles conferences. These have put India on the international map in technical textiles. These conferences are of less use if they do not translate into investments and new projects. This aspect has been slow. Why is it so? Although the awareness on the broad-based technology know-how and end products has been created, less to no awareness has been created among industrialists on the marketability of non-commodity textile products.