Reviving Khadi in India: Khadi Loses its Sheen

Khadi1, which symbolized self reliance and emancipation

during the freedom struggle in India2 has lost its sheen
over the years. And there are several reasons for the
same. Post 1947, India opted for state led large scale
industrialization.

With many Indian industrialists setting up huge textile

mills, the mass production of fine cloth led to the
availability of cloth at lower prices. People began to buy
machine made textiles and thus Khadi began losing out
to the mill fabric. In January 1953, the All India Khadi
and Village Industries Board was set up to provide
employment to thousands of spinners all over India.

In 1957, the Khadi and Village Industries Commission

(KVIC) was established to take over the work of the
board. KVIC was formed as a nodal agency to promote
Khadi all over India through its exclusive outlets known
as Khadi Bhandars3. The Government of India (GoI) has
ever since continued its support to Khadi.

However, there were a few problems. According to designers, the production of Khadi was
inconsistent and the cloth was prone to shrinkage and fabric stretch. Besides, fabric colours in
khadi were also limited. Red tapism and bureaucracy prevalent in the Indian system, further
hampered the growth of the Khadi sector. Inspite of having a wide distribution network, there
were problems, especially middleman. Corruption was rampant. There were many bogus Khadi
units operating in the country, which made it extremely difficult to claim rebates from the
Government of India (GoI).

KVIC received huge financial assistance from the GoI in the form of subsidies and rebates. In
May 2000, the Ministry of Small Scale Industries, announced a special package of Rs.12.16
billion to the industry. In order to face the challenges of globalization and strengthen its position
in the market, KVIC launched two separate brands, Sarvodaya and Khadi in August 2001.
Sarvodaya comprised consumer goods like incense sticks, spices, honey, and pickles.

The Khadi brand included products like essential oils, herbal oil & soaps, face scrubs, dry fruit honey,
designer garments etc. The Khadi brand was introduced exclusively for exports and upmarket. The fabric
was being promoted as a fashion fabric. Many high profile fashion designers were roped in to create
garments using the fabric. KVIC allotted huge funds into research and development to improve the
quality of Khadi. It allotted around Rs. 0.4 billion for promoting the fabric emphasizing its Unique Selling
Proposition (USP), eco-friendliness.

Background Note
Khadi has its roots in the freedom struggle of India.
Khadi, the home spun cloth was central to Gandhi's
vision of self- reliance and self- rule. Gandhi wanted
Indians to spin their own cotton thread and to weave
Khadi, thereby, providing employment to many Indians
and contributing to the country's self-sufficiency.

Post independence, Khadi fabrics were woven on

handlooms from cotton, silk, and woollen yarn, which
were hand-spun. The production of Khadi is labour
intensive as the weaving has to be done manually. The
pure cotton collected from cotton farms is first ginned
and bales are made.

These bales are then converted into rowings and

distributed to different spinning units. 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.

Reviving Khadi: From Freedom

Fabric to Fashion Fabric
In 1985, designer Devika Bhojwani pioneered the
Swadeshi label of Khadi ensembles. Those were
distributed through nearly 5000 Khadi Emporia. To
display Khadi's potential, KVIC organized a fashion
show in Mumbai in 1989. Nearly 85 dazzling garments
created by Devika Bhojwani were presented at the show.
This was the first step towards changing Khadi's earlier
image of being unfashionable. Commenting on the poor
state of Khadi, Devika Bhojwani said that failures in the
Khadi sector were a result of red tapism and bureaucracy
prevalent in the Indian system. Even though the country
had a wide distribution network, the middlemen,
commissions and cuts had gradually weakened the
system. She further said that though the government was
taking the initiative to revive Khadi, nothing much would
improve until the implementation, and the cost per
garment etc. were controlled.

In 1990, the Delhi based designer, Ritu Kumar presented her first Khadi collection, Tree of Life,
which helped put Khadi in the fashion circuit. With increasing interest of the western world in
use of handloom and Khadi, many Indian designers began to use Khadi for their designs. The
government also made efforts to promote Khadi. In September 2000, Vasundhara Raje, Minister
for Small Scale Industries, initiated a movement to revive all the 7,000 KVIC shops in India and
make Khadi more fashionable and affordable. The KVIC Board hired the services of leading
fashion designers to help create a new range and brand of Khadi wear.

In May 2001, KVIC set up the first air-conditioned shop in New Delhi. The décor was modern
and the clothes were neat and fashionable. The outlet sold Khadi garments designed by high
profile designers. On the opening of this outlet, well-known fashion designer, Rohit Bal
commented, "Khadi is the Indian alternative for linen. It is as comfortable and now, we've
proved that it is as fashionable"6. In January 2002, a high-profile textile exhibition, featuring
Khadi ensembles designed by prominent Indian designers, was launched in New Delhi to
popularise the traditional hand-spun cotton.

The idea of the exhibition was to promote wholly hand spun, hand woven and hand patterned fabric, as
a unique luxury product. The exhibition displayed western as well as traditional Indian attire made from
the finest Khadi available in the country. Besides, nearly 110 varieties of the fabric (from the sheerest to
the coarsest) were showcased. Designer Rakesh Thakore, whose collection was showcased in the
exhibition commented, "If packaged well, Khadi can be sold internationally." 7 The exhibition was
sponsored by a Swiss charitable trust, Volkart Foundation 8 in association with the Indian National Trust
for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH). 9

With many designers experimenting with Khadi, the designs are no longer as simple as they used to be.
A great deal of emphasis was given to the details of the designs and many new colours were introduced.
Eco-friendly vat dyes were used. In March 2002, Preyasi 10, the official designer for KVIC, launched "The
Khadi Range Collection-2002." In the collection, Khadi was used to create apparel such as, casual shirts,
waist coats, skirts, wrap-arounds, trousers, parallels, and tops for women.

Government Support to Khadi

The GoI had been providing huge subsidies and grants to the Khadi sector. Khadi was given a
rebate11 of Rs. 1.49 billion and Rs. 1.4 billion in 1998-99 and 1999-2000 respectively. In 2000-
2001, funds to the tune of Rs. 1.29 billion were released for the same. During the same time,
concerted efforts were made to root out corruption in the payment of rebate. Regular vigilance
raids were conducted in various parts of the country to detect malpractices in claiming of Khadi
rebates and to distinguish between genuine and bogus Khadi and village industries.

In May 2000, the Ministry of Small Scale Industries

announced a special package of Rs.12.15 billion for
KVIC. Of this, Rs.0.3 billion had been allocated for
renovation of the existing outlets, while Rs 0.4 billion
was sanctioned for promotional activities. Though the
GoI provided huge financial assistance to KVIC, the
funds did not produce the desired result. It was also being
felt that the structure of KVIC needed to be changed to
enable it to face the challenges of globalization.
Therefore, in 2000, the global consulting firm, Arthur
Anderson was hired to suggest restructuring strategies for
KVIC. According to the report, submitted to the Ministry
of Small Scale Industries, KVIC should be a policy-
making body and play a strategic role rather than being
involved in the operations.

It also suggested that KVIC should be made a market-

oriented organization, and given the freedom to decide on
the issues of rebate. In order to improve the marketing
and retailing aspects of the sector, it was proposed that an
independent marketing company be formed, which would
be disintegrated from the existing Khadi and village
industries structure.

This company would also deal with improvements in the quality of products, packaging and
marketing. It also recommended that the special rebate on Khadi products be made available in
the first week of every month, instead of the usual 90-day period after the month of October. The
declining production, sales, rural employment opportunities and share of Khadi in the total
business of KVIC had become a matter of serious concern for the government (Refer tables I, II
and III).

This had assumed greater significance as the population and per capita consumption of clothes in
India had considerably increased over the years. Keeping this in view, the GoI took many
initiatives to promote the sector and exploit the full potential of Khadi as a product category in
all its forms. As a part of these initiatives, KVIC registered Khadi as a brand name, thereby,
protecting it legally.

In order to compete with other varieties of textile and make it more acceptable in the market,
improvisation was needed and new products and designs had to be developed. Keeping this objective in
mind, in October 2001, KVIC signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ahmedabad-based
National Institute of Design (NID) to provide it design support in order to improve the diminishing
market-share of Khadi.

Under the agreement, a special cell would be set up at NID (financed by the KVIC) to provide design
support services in Khadi, village industries, packaging, marketing, communication, publicity,
disseminating materials and other design-related activities.

Khadi Goes for a Facelift

Over the years, the Khadi Boards of different states have been experimenting on blending of
Khadi with other materials and improving its quality. In July 2002, a collection of ensembles in
'Tencel Khadi' (a blend of Tencel and Khadi in the ratio 30:70) was created by Bangalore-based
designer, Deepika Govind, in association with the Karnataka Khadi Board. Tencel is a lyocell
fiber natural in origin and hence, environment friendly. It offers the comfort and luxury of a
natural fiber as well as the performance and practicality of a man-made fabric. Tencel Khadi
showed lesser shrinkage (4-5%) as compared to the high shrinkage seen in Khadi garments
(about 7 %).

Due to Tencel's softness, it would become easier to work

with Khadi and lend better drape quality to finished
garments. Tencel Khadi would provide excellent scope
for exports. In 2002, the Austria-based company, Lenzing
AG, proposed to make Khadi more eco-friendly by
blending the bio-degradable 'modal fibre'12 with Khadi.
This blend would absorb 50 per cent more humidity than
cotton. The blend, besides strengthening the Khadi yarn,
would make it easy to wash and maintain.

Future of Khadi
The saleability of any textile depends on its USP and
performance. For many years, the promotion for Khadi
had been on emotional and political grounds while its
quality and variety had been ignored completely. Khadi
has very little to offer in terms of fabric performance. It
looks attractive when starched and kept in showrooms
but, it does not remain the same after washing. Even finer
counts and blends of Khadi cannot withstand many
washes and thus, cannot be used for day-to-day purposes.

It was becoming extremely difficult for Khadi to compete with the high-tech, colour-fast,
wrinkle-free, mill-made cottons and blends available today. According to analysts, Khadi
requires government sanction in every single activity and has therefore been stuck in a
bureaucratic swamp, unable to increase its output or raise the quality of the fabric.

In 2002, Khadi formed less than half per cent of India's textiles. In order to grow, the production
of Khadi needs to be decentralized. A research and development wing should also be established
by KVIC to experiment with new patterns and colours. Besides, weavers can also be given grants
to enable creating new designs.

KVIC must allot a special advertising budget to promote the fabric. KVIC plans to launch an advertising
campaign in India and abroad to create awareness among people about Khadi and its uses. For this, it
allocated an advertising and promotional budget of about Rs. 0.4 billion. It also plans to set up Khadi
shops at all the international airports in India. KVIC is also exploring the possibilities of using e-
commerce to market its products. However, Khadi, like any other craft of India, would need to face the
challenge of quality and produce contemporary designs, which suit the tastes of the present generation.