Chapter 9 - A Shirt in a Market Notes
1. Buying and selling take place at every step in the chain.
2. Cultivation of cotton requires high levels of inputs as fertilizers and pesticides and the farmers have to incur heavy expenses on account of these. Most often, the small farmers need to borrow money to meet these expenses.
3. Erode’s bi-weekly cloth market in Tamil Nadu is one of the largest cloth markets in the world. A large variety of cloth is sold in this market. Clothes are made by weavers in the villages around and also brought here for sale.
4. Weavers bring cloth that has been made on order from the merchant. These merchants supply cloth on order to garment manufacturers and exporters around country. They purchase the yarn and give instructions to the weavers about the kind of cloth that is to be made.
5. Weavers get the yarn from the merchants and supply them the clothes. This arrangement has two advantages. The weavers do not have to spend their money on purchase of yam. Secondly, the weavers know from the outset what cloth they should make and how much of it is to be woven.
6. At the cloth market, the merchants sell the cloth to the garment factories. In this way, the market works more in favour of the merchants.
7. Weavers are required to invest a lot of money to buy looms. The weavers invest their savings or borrow money at high-interest rates. One loom cost is around 20,000/- and they require at least two looms. These looms cannot be operated alone and hence their family members work together. They earn about 3,500/- per month.
8. A variety of sarees, towels, shirts, ladies dress material and bed-sheets are produced in these looms. The arrangement between the merchant and the weavers is an example of putting-out system whereby the merchant supplies the raw material and receives the finished product. It is prevalent in the weaving industry in most regions of India.
9. Weaver are paid very little by the merchant under the putting-out system. Weaver’s cooperatives are one way to reduce the dependence on the merchant and to earn a higher income for the weavers.
10. The garment exporting factory use the cloth to make shirts. The shirts are exported to foreign buyers. The exporter tries his best to meet the conditions set by these powerful buyers.
11. In the garment factory many workers work. Most of these workers are employed on a temporary basis. Whenever the employer feels that a worker is not needed, the worker can be asked to leave.
12. Worker’s wages are fixed according to their skills. In most of the cases women are employed as helpers for thread cutting, buttoning, ironing and packaging. These jobs have the lowest wages.
13. The foreign businessperson makes huge profits in the market. The garment exporter make only moderate profits. The small farmers and the weaver do not get a fair price in the market. The merchants or traders are somewhere in between.
14. Ginning mill is a factory where seeds are removed from cotton bolls. The cotton is pressed into bales to be sent for spinning into thread.
15. Exporter is a person who sells goods abroad.
16. Profit is the amount that is left or gained from earnings after deducting all the costs. If the costs are more than the earnings, it would lead to a loss.
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