Post-colonial structure of the Indian garment industry and its role in maintaining the precarity of women workers

ABSTRACT

Neoliberal policies and decentralization of production activities in developing countries have been blamed for the ever-increasing precarity of labor in India since the late twentieth century. Precarious labor, however, had long been a characteristic feature of the Indian garment industry before it actively participated in neoliberal global garment trade in the 1970s and 1980s. This study examines policies that shaped the Indian garment industry in the post-colonial period from 1947 and their effects on production, employment patterns, and women’s work. It employs the Indian Government’s official industry censuses and employment survey reports. Accordingly, the policy of small-scale garment production was backed by benevolent aims of reviving traditional Indian crafts and maximizing employment. However, it yielded a fragmented industrial structure and a pool of precarious labor from a poverty-stricken population. Gender-based social stereotypes further enabled a socio-economically disempowered female workforce. The neoliberal policies that gained ground with the industry’s increasing export orientation exacerbated the precarious working conditions rooted in indigenous policy-making and social mindset. Locating labor precarity and women’s vulnerability within this complex mesh of local and global factors offers an improved framework for testing how neoliberal policies maneuver them to influence production and employment patterns in today’s garment industry.

KEYWORDS:

• Garment industry
• feminization
• fragmentation
• labor precarity
• women workers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In the labor context, ‘precarious’ is used broadly to refer to labor with non-standard working conditions. The International Labor Organization (ILO) notes that the meaning may differ per the economic, social, political, and labor market system. Even so, common features include an ambiguous employment relationship, temporary and insecure employment, low wages, and a lack of social security and collective bargaining opportunities (ILO, 2011, pp. 5–7).

2. Initially, an upper limit was also set on the employment per unit in SSIs (i.e. 50 [100] workers working with[out] the aid of power). This limit was removed in 1960. Nevertheless, employability per unit in the SSIs remained low.

3. The First SSI Census explained the ‘Capacity’ of a unit as ‘the maximum output attainable per shift by the unit in [the] manufacture of a product with the machinery installed and average employment provided’ (Government of India, 1977, p. 29).

4. Kathuria & Bhardwaj (1998) record the growth of the garment industry from $872 million in the 1985–1986 period to $3676 million in the 1995–1996 period, mainly because of a ‘system of decentralized production’ (p. 14). Roychowdhury (1995) explains that though the gross profits and exports of the textile industry increased through the late 1980s, segregated data showed that such increase was largely because of the unorganized power and hand loom sectors that continued to receive State patronage at the expense of the organized sector during that period. The organized textile mills suffered a decline in production.

5. Product-based reservation was backed by government orders issued under section 29B of the (Industries Development and Regulation Act, 1951). See, for instance, Schedule III of Notification No. S.O. 477E, dated July 25, (1991), issued by the Ministry of Industry (Department of Industrial Development) that reserved various products for small-scale production, such as hosiery, knitted inner, and outer wears made of cotton, wool and synthetic fabrics, readymade garments, cotton belting, belt lacing, and leather garments.

6. Notification No. S.O. 2(E) (January 1, National Sample Survey Organization 2001), Ministry of Commerce & Industry (Dept. of Industrial Policy & Promotion).

7. Nathan & Kalpana, (2007) and Mezzadri (2016) show that the feminization pattern has not been uniform in the Indian garment industry, and has been associated with product specialization in different clusters.

Additional information

Funding

There is no funding associated with this work.

Notes on contributors

Saumya Devraj

Ms. Saumya Devraj is a doctoral scholar at National Law University, Delhi, researching women garment workers in India. Her primary areas of interest include gender, labor, and human rights.