NCERT Summary: A Shirt in the Market

Introduction

• This chapter tells us the story of a shirt.
• It begins with the production of cotton and ends with the sale of the shirt.

A cotton farmer in Kurnool 

• A small farmer in Kurnool (Andhra Pradesh) grows cotton on their small piece of land.
• Once the reaping is done, cotton balls are gathered.
• Once the cotton is collected, farmer take the harvest to the local trader or to the neighbor merchant.
• Farmers earning from cotton cultivation is barely more than what they might have earned as a wage labourer.

The cloth market of Erode

• Erode's bi-weekly cloth market in Tamil Nadu is one of the largest cloth markets in the world. 
• A large variety of cloth is sold in this market. 
• Around the market are offices of cloth merchants who buy this cloth. 
• These merchants supply cloth on order to garment manufacturers and exporters around the country. 

Putting-out system- weavers producing cloth at home

• The merchant distributes work among the weavers based on the orders he has received for cloth. 
• The weavers get the yarn from the merchant and supply him the cloth.

The garment exporting factory near Delhi

• The Erode merchant supplies the cotton cloth produced by the weavers to a garment exporting factory near Delhi. 
• The garment exporting factory will use the cloth to make shirts. 
• The shirts will be exported to foreign buyers.
• These large stores do business strictly on their own terms. 

Women's worker

• In garment factory, most of them are women who are employed on a temporary basis. 
•  Women re employed as helpers for thread cutting, buttoning, ironing and packaging which have the lowest wages.

Market and equality

• The foreign businessperson made huge profits in the market. 
• The garment exporter made only moderate profits. 
• The small cotton farmer and the weaver at Erode did not get a fair price in the market for what they produced. 
• The merchants or traders have earned more but it is still much less than the exporter.
• The market offers people opportunities for work and to be able to sell things that they grow or produce.