Why texpreneurs are unable to capitalize on the shift from China & Bangladesh

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Coimbatore/Tiruppur/Erode: It was a call that made perfect sense. In November 2010, Narendra Modi, then the chief minister of Gujarat, visited Chennai and called on Tamil Nadu’s textile entrepreneurs to set up spinning units in his state.

This was a time when Tamil Nadu was reeling under a debilitating electricity crisis. The power guzzling spinning sector, forced to depend on diesel generators, an expensive proposition, was hit hardest and suffered huge losses. “Gujarat is one of the largest producers of cotton, which is then brought all the way to Coimbatore and spun into yarn.

If spinning mills were established in Gujarat, transport costs could be reduced. We can capture the world," the prime minister declared while addressing entrepreneurs. The icing on the cake was the assurance of uninterrupted and quality power supply.

The textile industry, however, did not heed Modi’s call. Reason: Tamil Nadu still had a solid labour force and the ecosystem to produce yarn and other products efficiently. Fifteen years on, the power problem has been resolved but the prospects of the textile units shifting from Tamil Nadu, but not necessarily to Gujarat, are more real than ever.

That is because the challenges the sector faces today are far more severe than those in 2010, including an excessive dependence on migrant workers. Worse, going forward, the availability of these workers is not guaranteed. For instance, Kumar Sharma (26), who came to Tiruppur from Bihar less than nine months ago, is already on his fourth job.

And he’s still not happy. “I moved jobs to increase my pay," he says. “But I am now looking at getting a job in one of the mills that have come up in Madhya Pradesh or Odisha," he