India enjoys the distinction of being the earliest country to domesticate cotton and utilize its fibre for manufacturing fabrics.
Cotton in a way is a gift of the Indian subcontinent to human civilization. It was in this subcontinent that the growing of cotton and its manufacture into yarn and cloth took root before spreading to other continents. Cotton has been in cultivation in India for more than five thousand years and the fabrics produced from cotton in the days of yore were as attractive as they are today.
Even today, despite the keen competition from technologically more advanced countries, Indian cotton textiles, yarn, raw cotton and other cotton based products are in great demand from several countries and are highly valued for their beauty, durability and quality.
"Where are the major growth areas in the world in cotton likely to be in the coming years? Of course, India along with China" said Mr. Nick Earlam, President of the Liverpool Cotton Association, U.K., in press interview in India recently. He further added "India is the third largest cotton producer in the world outside of China and the U.S.A. and India will be the most important player in textiles in the next few decades".
Old World Cottons were the dominant cottons of India. East India Company's efforts to introduce New World Cottons into India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did not quite succeed. It was only during the beginning of the present century tetraploid cotton got a foothold in India.
awahar Lal Nehru once said "The history Ja of cotton and of textiles is not only the history of growth of modern industry in India, but in a sense it might be considered the history of India during the past one hundred years. When I think of textiles my mind runs back some thousands of years to the period when India perhaps was the only country producing these textiles and exporting them to distant lands".
India is the cradle of the cotton industry and has been the producer of cotton and of the finest and most beautiful cotton fabrics since time immemorial. The presence of cotton mate-rial in excavations of Mohen-Jo-Daro in Sind (now in Paki-stan) in 1920 points to the existence of cotton textiles in India in 3000 B.C. Indian cotton, cotton fabrics and muslins were said to be in great demand in other countries in the past. India thus enjoys the distinction of being the earliest country in the world to domesticate cotton and utilize its fibre for manufacturing fabrics. The affinity has endured through the centuries and today India ranks first in area and third in production among all cotton producing countries in the world. While the history of cotton in India goes back to 3000 B.C., the history of introduction of machines in textile industry is only about 180 years old when a textile mill was established on the banks of Hooghly in Bengal.
Economic importance of Indian cotton
Cotton plays a vital role in the Indian economy. It sustains the Indian cotton textile industry, which constitutes the single largest segment of organized industries in the country. It pro-vides gainful employment to millions of people besides contributing substantially to the country's foreign trade. The economic significance of cotton and the cotton industry in India is so great that Mahatma Gandhi based his freedom movement on cotton economics.
India has brought about a qualitative and quantitative trans-formation in the production of cotton since her independence. The production increased from 27.9 lakh (about 3 million) bales in 1974-75 to 156 lakh bales (15.60 million) during 1999-2000 and is expected to go up to 20 million bales by the year 2005 (one bale = 170kg). The production of cotton in India has also risen in terms of quality. At the time of independence, mostly short and medium staple cottons were produced. Today, India produces the widest range of cottons capable of spinning from 65s to 120s counts. Perhaps no other cotton producing country in the world has this distinction.
The import of cotton, particularly of Egyptian and Sudanese long and extralong staple cottons, which was a regular phenomenon till 1978-79, is now no longer required as India is not only self sufficient in her cotton requirements but has also emerged as a net exporter of cotton, including those com-parable to Egyptian and Sudanese types.
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