This book comprehensively reviews, as well as analyzes, various aspects related to the Indian textile and apparel industries. While the focus is on economic and environmental issues, the discussion covers a lot of policy elements. The approach is inter-disciplinary, with concepts drawn from economics, environmental science, history, chemistry, textile technology and quantitative methods/optimization literature. This book will appeal to several stakeholders such as, policy researchers, policy-makers in governmental and international agencies, academicians and students from all the disciplines mentioned above, industrialists, managers and consultants working on Indian textile and apparel sectors. It might also provoke interest among as well as agriculturalists, farm policy analysts and industrialists focusing on other products such as chemicals, plastics, machineries, etc., who are wholly or partly dependent on textile and apparel industry in India.

This book examines the interplay between trade and the environment, with a focus on the Indian textile sector. While it is often claimed that developed countries’ non-tariff trade measures adversely affect the trade prospects of developing countries, establishing that claim systematically is a challenging task. This book examines the dilemma on the basis of various approaches, including a primary survey of different stakeholders and the large-scale modelling of the economy-environment inter-linkages. The interplay between the costs involved in meeting environmental regulations and the potential price-premiums that the cleaner products would get in the international market is analysed in order to assess the future trade prospects for Indian textiles. In addition, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the present scenario of the Indian textile sector. Accordingly, it will be of great interest to researchers, policy makers and graduate students specializing in environmental economics, development economics and international economics.

This book analyzes the social forces and political coalitions driving regional integration projects in Asia with a focus on ASEAN and Indonesian conglomerates. It asks which social forces, within the domestic political economy of Asian states, are driving governments to seek regional arrangements for economic governance. In particular the book asks how the emergence, reorganization, and expansion of capitalist class have conditioned political support for regional economic integration. By addressing these issues, the book emphasizes that the wellspring of regional economic institution projects stem from the process of capitalist development and the social forces it has unleashed. The book’s aims place the social and class relations that underpin regional projects – rather than the institutions which result from them—at the centre of the analysis of regional integration. The research for this account draws primarily on primary documents from archival and field research conducted by the author—including company documents and in-depth interviews, government reports and policies, and trade publications and data sources, which is supplemented with secondary sources where relevant.

This book examines the textile and clothing Industry of India and its trade scenario from a global perspective. New developments in international policies related to trade and investment and falling barriers to trade worldwide as well as within individual regional communities have transformed the structure of production and global competition in the textile and apparel industries across the world. Furthermore, with the incorporation of textile trade in the GATT framework following the removal of quantitative restrictions, and the subsequent liberalization of investment opportunities, the Indian market is now home to several international brands, which has led to the present upsurge of FDI in this very important sector of the Indian economy. The book closely examines the nature and impact of such external changes on the industry’s structure and labour-related issues. The key feature of this book is that it presents a snapshot of all the domestic and international policies related to this sector, from the earliest relevant period to the present, and analyses the topical issues in significant detail. The book also offers some empirical analyses to show the impact of external changes on the concentration of firms in this industry and the regional inequalities that have emerged from regional variations in firms’ employment, labour-income and profit levels. Further, it addresses another striking feature, namely the role of preferential trading blocs or Regional Trading Arrangements (RTA) in creating trade-diverting effects related to this sector apart from the implications of foreign collaborations and cross-border mergers and acquisitions. Many economists fear that the benefits of these RTAs for the partner countries are much greater than those for India, with net gains of incremental exports from India being small or even negative. This book discusses these critical issues in the context of India’s textile and apparel trade.

This book examines in detail key aspects of sustainability in the textile industry, especially environmental, social and economic sustainability in the textiles and clothing sector. It highlights the various faces and facets of sustainability and their implications for textiles and the clothing sector.

This book is part of a five-volume set that explores sustainability in textile industry practices globally. Case studies are provided that cover the theoretical and practical implications of sustainable textile issues, including environmental footprints of textile manufacturing, consumer behavior, eco-design in clothing and apparels, supply chain sustainability, the chemistry of textile manufacturing, waste management and textile economics. The set will be of interest to researchers, engineers, industrialists, R&D managers and students working in textile chemistry, economics, materials science, and sustainable consumption and production. This volume explores some alternative synthetic raw materials resulting from the recycling and regeneration of renewable textile fibers, and how these sustainable green-based composites can contribute to improved ecological and human health. The book offers insights into the impacts of human-made fibers and microfiber pollution, and how biodegradable material sourcing can help to curb harmful environmental impacts from these practices and achieve clothing and apparel sustainability.