Spotlight is on sustainability in the textile industry
One look at the latest collection of your favourite brand, and you are sure to succumb to the temptation to buy. But do you ever wonder about the working conditions of the manufacturing unit where this garment was brought to life? A day-long event, titled First South Asian Conference 2020: Sustainability in Textile and Apparel Industry, aims to shift the spotlight on the inhumane conditions in garment factories.
Fashion designer Payal Jain — one of the organisers of the conference — cites the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in which over 1,000 garment factory workers died. “The factory came down like a pack of cards! All companies that source apparel and textiles from South East Asia define safety standards, but most of these countries don’t have any standards for their domestic and export units,” she says.
The conference, organised by the Prem Jain Memorial Trust and the Michigan State University, also has two Delhi-based institutes as partners — School of Planning and Architecture, and Lady
Irwin College.
Jain says while India employs 45 million people in the apparel and textile sector, most of them women, there’s little concern on whether it’s safe or hygienic for them to work 10-12 hours in a factory. She adds while the government has defined parameters, few manufacturers comply with them. “That’s why it became important to organise this conference, to raise awareness especially among the youth,” she says.
The brain behind this convention, Prof MG Matt Sayal, says he thought of highlighting this issue when he mentored a Humphrey Fellow for research based on the Rana Plaza incident. “In an established industry, sometimes it’s difficult to bring about change unless you bring a collective force; we found it very relevant to textiles... I reached out to my teacher, late Dr Prem Jain, to discuss how we can bring about change because South Asia is becoming a big hub for apparel export. When I was working with Dr Jain and his associate, Dr Hari, to bring this idea to India first and then other South Asian countries, he (Dr Jain) passed away and the whole thing came to a standstill. We were thrilled when the Trust and Payal Jain took this on.”
Niyati Gupta, a PhD student of the Department of Building Engineering and Management, School of Planning and Architecture, says she is looking forward to the seminar. “I have certain exposure in the sustainable development field. I feel while we associate with top-notch brands, we don’t really get into the nuances of how these companies are operating. This conference gives me an opportunity to get into something that’s unknown, learn something new and combine the aspect of architecture and the livability factors of the workers in the industry.”