The Human Impact of a Ban: Why leather has a thing to worry!

The Maharashtra Government’s ban on beef whereby anyone selling beef or found in possession of it can be jailed for up to five years and fined Rs.10,000 will have unprecedented ripple effect! Following the footsteps of the Maharashtra Government, the Haryana Government is set to go one step ahead and equate cow slaughter with murder and bring cow killing under the aegis of Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code.

These bans will directly hit the Indian beef and leather industry, and in a big way !

The leather industry holds a prominent place in the Indian economy. India is the second largest producer of footwear and leather garments in the world. The leather industry is one of the top ten foreign exchange earning conglomerates. It employs a high number of people below 35 years of age and has engaged a significant number of women employees. The major production centres for leather and leather products in India are located in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab; Karnataka; Andhra Pradesh; Haryana, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, and Cochin.

As per the Council for Leather Exports in India, exports from leather industry has shown a healthy growth of 15.82% during April – November 2014. Ironically, the leather sector has been identified as “one of the Focus Sectors in the Make in India Programme of the Government of India, with the objective of enhancing production and employment”.

Some quick facts

• 40 per cent of bull hides are produced in Maharashtra.
• 33 operational abattoirs came to a halt in Maharashtra.
• Doomed over 10 lakh people connected with the trade.
• Cost of sourcing are up already by nearly 5 per cent.
• Exports of leather and leather products during the first 8 months of FY15 touched $4.45 billion.
• Supporting ailing cattle and feeding and maintaining it will cost a farmer Rs.5,000 each month.
• Finished and product making abled hide from Chennai already costs manufacturers Rs.800.

Fair Trade organisations with a motto of generating means of livelihood for the poor have always had leather products to offer. Many of its leather goods producers employ people who belong to the socially disadvantaged and poorest sections of society, who have no education to take up other jobs or money to set up alternate businesses. CRC interviewed its leather manufacturers and suppliers to note their reactions.

Tarun Pal of Allied Craft Products- a leather goods manufacturing units speaks:

“The decision is very dictatorial. The Government is not thinking of my colleagues in Maharashtra. If the West Bengal Government treads on the path of the Maharashtra Government, we will be smashed! Either we will have to get leather from states where ban on cow slaughter is yet to clamp down or we will have to import raw materials first to export (sounds paradoxical already!) thus escalating costs  or we will have to go out of business. Small, mostly unregistered manufacturers will certainly perish. Cows will be smuggled to other states where slaughter is permitted. There will be rampant black marketing”.

Kallol Sarker of Shilpa Kutir says:

“As of now I am fine because I source cow hide from Kolkata (that travels to Chennai in semi-processed state and comes back to us after Chennai makes the leather fit for product making). However, if Kolkata decides to impose the ban, we will cease to operate”. Interestingly, Kolkata has one of the largest leather complexes in Bantala spread across a sprawling 1,200 acres. There are 308 tanneries operating at CLC or Calcutta Leather Complex.  It employs 13,000 workers and is always bustling with activities. Raw hide is sourced from all over India and partially processed before being carted off to Chennai and then back to Kolkata.

Patrick Lee, Owner of CLC based medium sized tannery - Sheong Shi Tannery, who processes only cow hide is reflective and takes a holistic view of the situation. He reacts: 

“As of now, we are not affected by the ban because I source 100% of my leather from Kolkata but I have a premonition that this ban will spill over to other BJP administered states and in worst of cases, we may come under its purview too! We will have to shut our shops and migrate to other countries. Moreover, we are Christians. We consume beef. Beef ban will affect our food intake. Why is the Government honouring sentiment of only one religion? As many as seven religions are practised in India. In school I was taught that India’s strength lies in its unity in diversity. So it is disturbing to see this kind of preferential treatment. We are feeling isolated and non-Indian”.

The facts, and the comments above, clearly show that for whatever reason beef has been banned, it is likely to have a direct, negative impact on the economic livelihood of hundreds of Indian workers Those in the small-scale informal sector will be affected severely given their lack of financial resources and options. Many will be jobless and go hungry!

We at CRC cannot help but wonder if those who suggest, enact, and enforce such bans have thought about the human impact. If they have, we sincerely hope the bans will be reversed soon.

Refashioning Cotton the Organic Way - A CRC Story

Cotton is perceived as ‘the fabric of our lives’. We come in contact with cotton-made material in our daily lives. CRC took yet another step in the right direction and turned attention to promoting, developing and marketing organic cotton made products – one of the first of its kind in the hand-woven product arena in Fair Trade! Growing conventional cotton means guzzling pesticides with enormous environmental degradation impact. In tune with environmental ethics, CRC turned a new leaf in the reformation book by opting for organic.

Organic cotton was solely the bastion of big textile houses producing in mass scale. Back in early 90's, a pioneer Swiss company and an Indian spinning mill encouraged organic cotton growing in Madhya Pradesh, India. It was a non-commercial, experimental motive to begin with, but has now grown into a large enterprise. The Indian subsidiary of the Swiss firm is now one of the most sought after organic cotton producing companies.

The organic cotton growing bio-dynamic calendar based on astronomical positions sets the ball rolling. Accordingly, farmers derive the appropriate timing for conjuring up an organic manure base. Once soil is organically treated, seed is sowed. Various stages of Cow Pat Pit (CPP) farming and soil treatment with bio fertilizers like cow dung, vermiwash (tonic collected after vermi-composting), egg shells, jeev amrit, matka khaad, buttermilk, and many other naturally produced agents, are used for agricultural growth augmentation. A casual stroll through organic cotton fields reveals several varieties of organic cotton like short staple, medium staple and long staple. Every field is bordered with a plantation of pigeon pea as a border crop. It takes a minimum of 3 years for a conventional cotton field to go organic.

CRC started buying organic cotton yarn from this certified organic cotton producer (Approved by the Organic Trade Association) and distributes the yarn to its weaving partners. At the same time, CRC developed a range of products woven by these partners, such as Ikkat table cloths, Ikkat yardage, and Ikkat baby carry-cloths, scarves, and fabrics for making shopping bags etc.

CRC has also embarked on the journey of natural dyes with local partners. Only plant extracts are used and petrochemical dyes are bid adieu when it comes to coloring organic cotton fabric. Thus, CRC organic cotton products are non-allergenic and do not contain septic chemicals or bad transpiration. In due course, CRC aims at adding more products to the organic cotton inventory and fulfilling the ambivalent aim of generating a source of income for producers and offering a healthier way of life to purchasers.

• Why Organic? Less than 3% of the world’s arable land is planted with cotton. 
• 24% of the world's insecticides and 10% of the world's pesticides are used for cotton cultivation. 
• Pests build up resistance to chemicals, farmer borrows money to buy more chemicals than before, farmer gets less profit from crop, this repeats until the farmer is destitute. 
• 1 acre of organic cotton instead of an acre of conventional cotton reduces CO^2 release by two tonnes a year.

Dolan Chatterjee 

Projects and Policy - CRC India

Welcome to the world of CRC

At CRC we believe that life is a beautiful place. 

But not for everyone. 

There are hundreds of traditional artisans in India, and all over the world, 

who find it hard to get by on a daily basis. 

Sometimes, even two meals a day is a luxury. Industrialization, mass-market products, and the global consumer’s thirst for cheap machine-made products – all work hand-in-hand to deprive traditional artisans of even a chance to earn a fair livelihood. 

Under the umbrella of Fair Trade, we at CRC have been working for the last 24 years to make a difference for these artisans. 

And we firmly believe that we have made a difference and enabled them to make their own lives a beautiful place. 

We present to you our new website (www.craftresourcecenter.com) and this blog. Through these pages we will highlight our producer partners and their skills, their work, and the products that they bring to you. 

We will also attempt to highlight some of the socio-economic issues confronting them and how at CRC, we try to provide them with assistance and support. We hope these pages tell you the stories and travails and victories of these traditional artisans, and ours as well. 

It all started with a discussion over a cup of tea. And then, with the support of the Swiss Development Cooperation, CRC was born. Bernard Muller, Dorothea and Peter Ruesch, Rudi Dalvai, Elisabeth Ortner and Heinz Binzegger - all of them guided us through our infancy and we are grateful to them. 

After 24 years we can claim to be a stable and self-sustaining organization completely focused on our mission and vision. Much of the credit for this goes to our co-founder Manoranjan Walia who passed away in 2012. Walia, as he was affectionately known by everyone, may have left us, but his spirit is still with us at CRC every day. We will always be grateful to him for bringing us this far and inspiring us to go beyond. 

Drop us a line and let us know what you think of our website. We thank you for visiting our website and supporting Fair Trade. We all live in one world, let’s together make it a Fair World. 

Irani Sen 

Founder and Director, CRC