Kishor Tiwari, president of Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS), a farmer support group in central India, tells Cotton International that three farmers committed suicide within the past week. Farmers, in anticipation of higher prices, had been stockpiling the crop but the market has crashed in India, resulting in human tragedy. Farmers are committing suicides due to farming debts and increase in cotton cultivation costs. Vidarbha, the eastern region of the state of Maharashtra, accounts for about 25 percent of India’s total cotton crop, with 2.2 million hectares planted.
Despite production that is expected to total a record 32 million bales (170 kg), the Indian government has imposed a quota of 5.5 million bales for export. Farmers are not getting international prices for their harvest and even traders in local markets have been seriously affected, Tiwari said, placing the blame on the Ministry of Textiles for imposing the export quota.
The Indian cotton market has been plummeting for the past few days, with the price of good quality cotton lint dropping by more than 50 percent. On Friday, May 13th, quality cotton traded at $2.37/kg. Last month, farmers were getting $1.55/kg for seed cotton, which has crashed now to $0.71/kg.
Tiwari said that he will be leading a delegation of 100 farmers and a few farm industry leaders to meet with Sonia Gandhi, chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance, a coalition group that is planning on a hunger strike if the talks do not take place as planned.
Textiles Part of Winning Election Game in India
Meanwhile, in the State of Tamilnadu, it’s clear that textiles are a big part of the winning party’s election manifesto (the election for the 234-seat state assembly was held a month ago but results were not announced until May 13).
Voters in the southern state, which is the home for the largest concentration of spinners in India with over 1900 mills, voted out the current ruling party, which had won the election using a “freebies bonanza” in 2006. Tamilnadu, which is the 7th most populated state in India with 72 million people, elected the current opposition party, AIADMK, led by ex-film star and a former Chief Minister J. Jayalalitha, by a stunning majority.
Freebies have become a part of the election game in Tamilnadu state these days. The many freebies in the new election manifesto include items such as free laptops for higher education students, and the winning party has announced that it will provide four sets of school uniform to the students who are in the public education system. This is a good opportunity for textile industry, which now has to provide cloth for a large number of children’s uniforms. According to some statistics, the state has over 13 million school children between the age 6 and 18.
The incoming government has pledged that it will fulfill the election manifesto within 18 months. Challenges await, however,and the new government in Tamilnadu will have to deal with many issues that are near and dear to the textile industry, such as power shortages, dyeing and processing industry issues such as closures, environmental problems and cotton availability.