Organizer: Garrett Menning, University of California, Santa Barbara
Chair: Douglas E. Haynes, Dartmouth College
Discussant: Morris D. Morris, Brown University
Scholars of South Asia have long recognized the co-existence of small-scale, decentralized production with large-scale capitalist enterprise. But the resurgence of small-scale manufacture in recent years suggests that smaller units are not simply some "survival" of an earlier stage of development but an integral part of the emerging structure of contemporary capitalism on the subcontinent and around the globe. In the textile industry, while handlooms and larger mills have languished, the importance of small "powerloom" factories has grown in recent years from a place of virtual insignificance to one of dominance in the Indian market. A complex set of productive relations have emerged in association with the powerloom industry, including sub-contracting and more informal (but often more intense) forms of control over labor.
Our panel will explore the origins, consolidation and expansion of the powerloom industry on the subcontinent, examining a series of questions central to understanding its growth. What technological changes and structural shifts made possible the emergence of this sector during the late colonial period? How have the domestic cloth market, technological changes, structural shifts and the policies of the Indian state affected the powerloom industry? What forms of production relations and control over labor have been associated with the powerlooms and how have these affected labor's capacity to organize?
The panel will contribute not only to an understanding of the rise of the Indian powerloom industry, but to a more general appreciation of the factors that have promoted decentralized production globally in a wide range of industries.
Weavers' Capital and the Origins of the Powerlooms: Technological Transformation
and Structural Change among Handloom Producers in Western India, 1920-1950
Douglas E. Haynes, Dartmouth College
This paper explores the artisanal origins of powerloom production in western India during the late colonial period. It argues that changes in the structure and technology of handloom manufacture, particularly the emergence of what I call "weavers' capital," provided a foundation upon which the powerloom industry could develop after the 1920s. It shows how small-scale weaver-entrepreneurs, employing a small number of non-family workers, began to buy used powerlooms from the mills and Bombay and set them up, first in their homes after connections had been made to public electricity supplies. Key to the success of these initial efforts was the capacity of weaver-capitalists for "flexible specialization," that is, the ability to adjust the new forms of technology to narrow, specialized, and fluctuating markets. The paper also explores the forms of production relations inherent in early powerloom workshops, demonstrating how the continued recruitment of labor from within artisanal neighborhoods and caste groupings also contributed to the flexibility of the early forms of powerloom production.
In a final section, the paper speculates about why small-scale, decentralized forms of textile production have persisted in ex-handloom centers, despite the rapid expansion of the powerlooms' markets and the easy availability of cheap labor. It points particularly to the continued attraction of flexible organizational structures to western Indian capitalists in the context of considerable market volatility, labor organization and militancy, and government regulation.
Ethnic Enterprise in the Decentralized Textile Industry of Surat City, India
Garrett Menning, University of California, Santa Barbara
The paper explores the role of ethnic networks in the functioning of the contemporary "art silk" industry of Surat City, in western India. Surat has become India's largest center for the production of synthetic fabrics such as polyester and rayon, part of the growing national decentralized textile sector. Surat's art silk industry also represents one example of a larger, global trend toward flexible, decentralized manufacturing for specialized markets.
I argue that one of the secrets to the success of the industry in Surat is a system of ethnic entrepreneurship in which business people rely on informal networks based on ties of kinship, caste and sectarian membership, and place of origin. Participation in these networks gives merchants and manufacturers access to community resources such as pooled knowledge and capital. These flexible networks also allow them to keep down production and distribution costs, react quickly to market fluctuations, match supply with demand, and even to avoid onerous government restrictions.
To illustrate how the industry functions, I use examples from four communities in which I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in 1992-93. These include a community of weavers known as the Surti Kshatriyas, the Marwari Purohits, who are cloth merchants, the Memon Muslims, who specialize in the yarn trade and the dyeing and printing business, and the Marwari Jains, who have successfully broken into many different areas of art silk production in Surat.
The Rise and Fall of the Factory in the Indian Cotton Textile Industry, 1750-1950
Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, University of Cambridge
This paper proposes to extend the scope of an essay I had published in 1985 which argued that the history of industrialization in India had been determined by political conflicts and contradictions rather than technological diffusion and innovation alone. Until recently, it was taken for granted that the factory was the inevitable outcome of the transition from handicraft to manufacture. Its emergence has been variously explained in terms of economies of scale, the facility it afforded for the closer supervision and control of labor and the need for owners to create a role for themselves within the production process.
Factory production developed in India when its share of manufacturing output had collapsed dramatically; the rise of the factory failed to arrest its decline; and as India's relative share slowly rose in the 1960s and 1970s, its cotton mills were beginning to be replaced by 'small-scale' powerloom workshops. This paper will explore three questions: why did capitalists turn to mill production in the late nineteenth century? How far did they succeed in exercising a more effective discipline over labor in the mills? How far were conflicts with labor responsible for the decline of the factory? In brief, its aim is to investigate how far the rise and fall of the factory was determined by the nature and depth of labor resistance.
Powerlooms versus Handlooms: Two Case Studies in Silk Weaving in Karnataka
Supriya RoyChowdhury, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore
The existing literature on the decentralized sector in India's textile industry has mostly focused on the impact of powerloom expansion on mills (organized sector) which have largely been displaced from their erstwhile dominant share in textile production. The focus also has largely been in the area of cotton textiles.
Karnataka produces over 60% of India's total production of silk. In silk weaving, the handloom sector, traditionally the predominant producer, has been almost completely taken over by powerlooms. Official thinking, however has yet to take cognizance of this phenomenon, and in fact there are no official statistics available on the relative share of handlooms and powerlooms in silk production.
The selected case studies represent different points in the spectrum of the shift: in Dodallapur, the shift to powerlooms has been complete, and in Anekal the transition is underway. In both the selected case studies, an immigrant group of Marwari traders (from Rajasthan) dominate the powerloom production process by virtue of their monopoly over silk trading. The paper will focus on the relationship between this group, powerloom owners belonging to the backward castes of Telugu and Kannada Devangas, and powerloom workers mostly comprising of scheduled castes and Muslims.
The thrust of the paper will be to locate the response of state policies and agencies to changes in silk production processes, the impact of the new production process upon existing class, caste and communal configurations, and the connections between the new production structures and labor empowerment and organization.