Fear Looms Large

The tariff imposition by the United States has cast a shadow over cities like Tiruppur, India's knitwear capital, that depend on the ebb and flow of international demand

- N.K. Bhoopesh IS ASSISTANT EDITOR. OUTLOOK. HE IS BASED OUT OF KOCHI, KERALA

LIKE thousands of other women workers who throng the streets of Tiruppur, India’s ‘knitwear capital’ in the Tamil Nadu district of the same name, in the early hours every morning, 35-year-old Vimala hurries to reach her factory on time. Her workplace is in Poolavanpatti, a village on the city’s outskirts marked by narrow lanes and open drains. Nearly 300 women work in various departments of the textile processing company that has hired Vimala. While she has been in the ironing section for the past few months, many of her coworkers are engaged in stitching, knitting and fabric processing. They are among Tiruppur’s workforce of over a million, nearly 65 per cent of them women.

Their lives are shaped instead by the rhythm of factory shifts, long commutes and the hope that steady work will secure a modest future.

Until the late 1970s, however, this bustling industrial hub was a quiet agricultural town. The transformation began with the rise of small-scale textile units, which gained momentum after economic liberalisation opened the doors for global textile buyers. Today, Tiruppur's prosperity rests on the fortunes of thousands of export-driven units, which are vulnerable to the uncertainties of international trade. No wonder the recent turbulence in global trade—particularly the tariff imposition by the United States—has cast a shadow over cities like Tiruppur that thrive or sink depending on the ebb and flow of international demand.

THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY IN TIRUPPUR AND COIMBATORE EMPLOYS MORE THAN A MILLION WORKERS, AND EXPORTS GARMENTS AND OTHER TEXTILE ITEMS WORTH MORE THAN RS 45,000 CRORE ANNUALLY.