Abstract
This article explores social production relations in the silk economy of a rural town in South India which has experienced a major process of industrialisation in the post-Green Revolution. Being a market for agricultural products in the 1960s, the town has now become the centre of a manufacturing economy specialised in silk saris. The article argues that, since the Green Revolution, the town's silk economy has been organised as an industrial district, in which competitiveness relies on low labour costs and is enhanced by class and caste stratification and segmentation. Focusing on the relations between the economic organisation of the silk economy and the town's social structure, the analysis is carried out by means of the Marshallian concept of industrial district as theorised by Giacomo Becattini.
Cet article s’intéresse aux relations sociales de production dans l’économie de la soie d’une ville rurale de l’Inde du Sud qui connaît un processus majeur d’industrialisation en cette période de post révolution verte. Alors qu’elle était un marché de produits agricoles dans les années 60, la ville est aujourd’hui le centre du secteur manufacturier spécialisé dans la fabrication de saris en soie. L’article cherche à montrer que depuis la révolution verte, le secteur de la soie de la ville en question est organisé comme un district industriel au sein duquel la compétitivité dépend de la présence d’une main d’œuvre peu coûteuse et est renforcée par la stratification et division en castes et classes. Portant une attention particulière aux relations entre l’organisation économique du secteur de la soie et la structure sociale de la ville, l’analyse est effectuée en s’appuyant sur le concept marshallien de district industriel théorisé par Giocomo Becattini.
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Notes
This exercise is part of a wider analysis of Arni's capitalist change after the Green Revolution (Basile, 2011), in which I have addressed Arni's long-term change and the organisation of its civil society. I take the silk sector as the main activity of the town, and I explore the factors accounting for its growth and integration as a significant illustration of general trends. To this aim, I rely on the available evidence and information, while my own research on Arni's capitalism provides the broad conceptualisation in which this exercise in contextualised.
This estimate differs from the Census data according to which in 2001 Arni's population is about 60 000. The unofficial estimate includes the migrant population from the villages.
This estimate comes from the 1993 survey and cannot be updated. Yet, subsequent field research shows that the silk sector keeps its importance in Arni well into the twenty-first century. According to Sacratees (2004, p. 8), in 2004, in between 12 000 and 15 000 weavers were engaged in Arni's silk economy, working in 200 big firms and 600 small firms.
Contrariwise to other silk weaving areas, Arni's saris lack specific qualities and are marketed as low-price Kancheepuram saris. Then, as I stress below, what is exceptional in the case of Arni is the ‘invention’ of a new product which, meeting the increasing demand of low-price wedding saris, creates the conditions for the industrial transformation of the town.
In the Arni region the number of individuals from the traditional silk weaving castes is rather limited and silk weaving is mainly done by cotton weaving castes and by other caste communities. As Nagaraj et al (1996, p. 51) suggest, this is a specificity of the area, while in other silk centres of North Tamil Nadu, such as Kancheepuram, a percentage as high as 80 per cent of weavers come from traditional silk weaver castes.
According to the evidence provided by Roman (2004, p. 54), traditional silk weaving communities in contemporary Arni include Segunda Mudaliars, Veera Saiva Chettiars and Devanga Chettiars (a caste group that started specialising in silk only 40 years ago). But they are also joined by non-traditional weaving communities, such as Gounder and Udayar (Roman, 2004, p. 55) in the town and Agamudia Mudaliar, Vanniars and Yadavas in the villages (Nagaraj et al, 1996, p. 56). While the traditional silk weaving communities belong to the Backward Castes, among the non-traditional weaving communities, the Gounder, Agamudia Mudaliar and Vanniars belong to the Backward Castes, while the Udayar and Yadavas belong to the Most Backward Castes (Basile, 2009, p. 15).
Roy (1993, p. 135 et seq.) shows that in 1950, with less than 500 handloom, Arni was one of the small towns in Tamil Nadu in which silk weaving was concentrated.
It is interesting to note that, while the labour force comes from the town itself and from the surrounding villages, the raw silk and the raw yarn come from the state of Karnataka, and only occasionally from China (Sacratees, 2004, p. 9).
The Italian Central Statistical Institute has recently introduced a new methodology to identify industrial districts on the basis of the spatial source of the labour force, defining local labour markets as ‘commuting areas’ (ISTAT, 1997).
See for instance the case of Prato (Becattini, 1997).
Master-weavers/maligais are also moneylenders. This accounts for the spreading of bonded labour in the sector (Roy, 1993, p. 7).
For an analysis of social and family behaviour of elites in Arni, see Harriss-White (2003a, pp. 64, 90).
For an analysis of child labour in the textile sector, see Human Rights Watch (2003).
Nagaraj et al (1996, p. 99) estimate that in the mid-1990s a monthly wage for a dependent weaver owning the loom and with two children working outside the family is Rs 300 in Arni and Rs 198 in the villages, in both cases below the average estimate of Rs 300/400 provided by the Census of Handlooms (1987–1988) for mid-1980s (Roy, 1993, p. 191).
Here is a major specificity of Arni in relation to the ideal type of the industrial district where social mobility is a factor (and a consequence) of growth (Becattini, 2004).
De Neve (2005) reaches a similar conclusion (p. 300 et seq.).
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Acknowledgements
This article contributes to the studies of Arni, following the path inaugurated by Prof. Barbara Harriss-White from Oxford University: her research and published work represent the background of my analysis of Arni's silk sector. The article heavily relies on the data on Arni's long-term change collected by Barbara Harriss-White in more than 30 years – which were carefully coded and entered by Kaveri Harriss and Elinor Harriss – and on the information and analysis on Arni's silk economy provided by Camilla Roman from Oxford University and by K. Nagaraj from the Madras Institute of Development Studies. I am very grateful for the opportunity of using this rich field-material. I thank Barbara Harriss-White for many conversations on Arni over many years and for her comments on this article. I also thank Marco Bellandi from the University of Florence, Claudio Cecchi from the University of Rome La Sapienza, Camilla Roman, and Mao Mallona from Goldsmiths, University of London, for their useful comments on a previous version. The article has also benefited from the comments of two anonymous referees.
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Basile, E. From the Green Revolution to Industrial Dispersal: Informality and Flexibility in an Industrial District for Silk in Rural South India. Eur J Dev Res 23, 598–614 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2011.16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2011.16