AT ONE POINT, YARNS MADE IN PANIPAT ACCOUNTED FOR 90% OF THE SHODDY BLANKETS USED WORLDWIDE — MOST OF IT IN DISASTER RELIEF

This town has a tradition of spinning yarn and weaving textiles, and access to cheap labour from across Haryana and neighbouring Bihar and Uttar Pradesh (UP).

Panipat inherited the tag of cast-off capital of the world after a similar recycling hub in Prato, Italy, shut in the 1960s. Ironically, it was low-cost alternatives in the Indian subcontinent that contributed to Prato’s decline. Recycling units here began to use the same machines to offer a competitive product at prices that were far lower, because of lower labour costs here. Now, China’s cheap fleece alternative is doing the same to Panipat, allowing new blankets to be made from virgin fibres that are softer and prettier, and cost less.

The industry in Panipat reached its peak in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Most shoddy makers there agree that the future now lies elsewhere.

Woollen castoffs are first sorted into basic colour families.

Next, the buttons, zippers and linings are ripped out and sold to kabadiwalas.

The clothes are then shredded, conditioned, pulled apart in a carding machine, and finally twisted into yarn.

The yarn is sent to looms across Panipat and in Rajasthan, UP and Madhya Pradesh, to be turned into shoddy blankets.

Most of the blankets are exported, via the Red Cross, for use in disaster relief operations. Some are sold domestically, for use in northern states with severe winters.

(Top and above) Inside Shankar Woollen Mills, where the bustle continues but production has dropped by half over the past two years.