Reviving Khadi in India

Background Note Contd...

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.

In order to popularize khadi among the masses, in 1957, the government set up the KVIC. It had the following broad objectives:
- The social objective of providing employment
- The economic objective of producing saleable articles, and
- 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.

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4] Charka is the Indian version of the spinning wheel.

5] Kurta is a loose fitting shirt.

Case Details

Case Code : BSTR055
Themes: Corporate Restructuring
Case Length : 9 Pages
Period : 1985-2003
Organization : Minister for Small Scale Industries
Pub Date : 2003
Teaching Note : Not Available
Countries : India
Industry : SSI

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