Interview with Mr Manikam Ramaswami

The most memorable episode was the experience of getting import license to import Air jet looms way back in 1979. As Air jet was new to India and even IIT Delhi did not have it, my request was referred to the textile commissioner. He referred it to SITRA and ATIRA. SITRA felt that it was too premature to think of air jets in India and felt it will be not before 2000 that Air jets become relevant in India. ATIRA felt it was a waste of money and it would be wiser to modernize plain looms by adding warp stop motions and Electronic weft feelers. It took several meetings at Bombay; Ahmedabad and Coimbatore before I was given the license to import one loom for trial.

That is how the first Air jet loom entered India in the year 1979.

The textile Industry in India is fairly matured and all set to make a giant leap forward; World over textiles is a migratory industry moving steadily from high cost of production countries to lower cost of production countries.

In India for some reasons the textile Industry is not yet looked upon as an Industry that can remove large scale unemployment by the government; whereas in China, it is looked upon as an employment providing industry. This approach of the government is the big differentiator. China relaxes labour rules and increases incentives during periods of economic slowdown and periods when there is unemployment; tightens the labour rules and reduces incentives when economy picks up or unemployment drops. India on the other hand looks at (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act)NREGA as the solution provider. I will not blame the government for it, but take the blame as created by the Industry. The only blunder done by the government was giving incentives for cotton traders with retrospective effect putting 500 to 600 crores in the hands of a few traders. Hopefully such mistakes do not happen in future. This mistake made our cotton available to mills in China and Bangladesh cheaper by 10% and ruined our exports. An anti national act to put it very mildly!

Cotton was an Issue, our present Minister Maran is keeping a close tab on the situation and we are very confident that he will ensure that we are not handicapped by the same set of traders whose greed made the government come out with anti national policies of ‘incentivising’ past exports.

In my opinion the biggest challenge that industry faces is; convincing the policy makers that the textile industry is capable of offering better opportunities than NREGA to the unemployed; to be honest I am myself not convinced.

As an industry, we need to do some introspection and make sure that we have in place a minimum wage structure for all textile jobs; link all TUFs rebates to number of provident fund paid employees we have; be more transparent in treatment of water and get rules changed wherever it is impractical rather than manage the inspectors.

If we can with certainty say that we are employing people giving them a better livelihood than NREGA then we should aggressively ask for greater support in line with what China and other countries are getting. If we get equal support, there will be nothing to stop Indian textiles from doubling itself in less than 3 years and creating additional 2.5 to 3 crores good jobs across India.

The support we need is not gratis but a conscious effort to give back all state, central levies, extra cost of in-house power generation (thanks to power shortages in textile dominant states like Tamil Nadu being more or less exclusively borne by textiles).

Thank God for the small consumption of a bio non degradable product! Except in a few areas like road making and soil retention, I personally not believe in increasing non woven consumption; it is no doubt cheap but has a huge impact on the environment.

Non woven is not textiles; it is as remotely connected to textiles as plastic / PVC / polypropylene sheets making or poly woven sacks making. Understanding this is important to save the textile industry.

Indian culture says that it is one of our 5 sacred duties (Pancha Maha Yagna ) to protect the environment; not withstanding Copenhagen or Kyoto we need to look at it as a compulsory right. CSR is beyond the call of duty but environment protection is a duty.

We have one JV in Italy; we are in the process of establishing the second one in Germany. We had a JV in Greece which was wound up last year. We have our offices in UK and Bangladesh to market our products in these markets, and are exploring the possibility of establishing manufacturing JVs in Africa as we see Africa as the next textile manufacturing destination when China and India start consuming greater proportion of their products domestically with rapidly rising buying power.

Welcome.