Move over hemp. Here is India's indigenous organic fabric. Claimed to be 5000 year old Indian fabric, Malkha manifests thousands of years of Indian experience of cotton. When organic cotton and eco-friendly clothing is becoming a global phenomenon, malkha Cotton is the Indian entry to this revolution. The fabric is woven by skilled weaver families on handlooms in Indian villages from cotton grown by smallholder farmers. The malkha process puts the intermediate stage of cotton spinning back in the village, making the entire textile chain FROM COTTON TO CLOTH village-based.It is priced reasonably and is produced across Andhra Pradesh.
Malkha Cotton is marketed as an eco-friendly, energy saving and a beautiful fabric which has higher ranges of comfort and style. The USP of Malkha is that the fabric is hand woven, and it helps to boost to the lives of the weavers. It is a traditional India fabric made utterly livable and chic with modern techniques of production. Former environment minister, Mr. Jairam Ramesh had sanctioned Rs. 35 lakh for a ‘Malkha' production unit run by the Boorugula Trust in Pulukula village of Mahbubnagar district. He had promised all help to promote ‘Malkha', a pure cotton cloth made directly from raw cotton.
The conventional way of spinning a cotton yarn, involves a rigorous machine process, which decreases the routine quality and the feel of the fabric. It not only kills the geographical diversities of the fabric, but also ends up in piles of cotton fabric being wasted. The prevailing cotton processing technology involves pressing of loose lint into high-density bales for ease and cheapness of transportation. Baling uses steam and high pressure. It destroys the natural fibre to fibre separation, which is a pre-requisite for spinning. To undo the effects of baling a long line of costly machinery is needed - the blowroom machinery. The force used in the blowroom to separate the fibres destroys some of the valuable qualities of cotton – absorbency, durability, softness, elasticity. Mills process cotton until its fibres are dead.
On the contrary, Malkha cotton, is processed by carding machine and then delicately hand woven. This process gives Malkha Cotton yarn the property of being much stronger than the spun cotton yarn. This also gives Malkha an unique property, that makes it last longer. The process is energy efficient, avoids baling and unbaling of cotton by heavy machinery and unnecessary transportation. This eco-friendly fabric is soft, breathes, holds colour and reflects its handmade heritage in its texture.
In contrast, Malkha is gently spun and then woven by hand, keeping the springiness of the live fibres all the way into the cloth. That is why the resultant fabric feels soft and is breathable, absorbent and colour-fast. Malkha uses the carding machine for preparation and does not require the cotton yarn to be bailed and then unbailed, which in turn, retains the strength and freshness of the fabric. Because the cotton is taken directly from the fields and undergo the carding process there, it also saves the yarn from unnecessary transportation. After the carding process, it goes to the weavers in the near-by villages. The hand woven property of Malkha Cotton not only provides a beautiful texture to the fabric, it also provides an employment to the village residents.
The main drawback of producing Malkha is that it is a fabric that cannot be produced in large amounts as is the case with spun cotton. Hand weaving takes time and thus, the availability of Malkha is never in abundance. But due to its property of being a lustrous and fine khadi, it is making a rage in the textile industry. Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) has been trying to market the industry in a strategic way. The developments have given a new shape to the Dastkar, in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Various stalls are being put up all over the state for the promotional purposes. The state government has been implementing various shows that would showcase Malkha as a fabric with multiple prospects. Proponents of Malkha claim that this difference in quality is literally the difference between the violent processing to which mill-made cotton is subjected, versus the gentle hand carding, spinning and weaving that Malkha fibres encounter.
The proponents of alkha put it as below "Today there is crisis in both cotton farming and in handloom weaving. Farmers suicide is a frequently occuring phenomenon. Farmers are caught in the trap of high input costs, growing only the kind of cotton derived from foreign varieties which spinning mills can use. These cotton varieities are heavily dependent on irrigation and farmers are not left with any safety-net if the crop fails. Traditional Indian varieties on the other hand used to be grown as rain-fed crops, intercropped with pulses. Cotton prices are kept low by the world price which is undercut by huge subsidies to its growers in the developed countries. "
This is where Malkha comes in. The yarn is spun near the places where the fabric is wovencreating more symbiotic relationships between weavers and spinners. It links farmer to weaver and maker to user. Father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi had once envisaged a similar mechanism for khadi. Malkha can help traditional farmers and weavers, and the environment together. As many claim: "I ended up buying a lot more than i intended. Not only becauseI loved the way it looked, but also because it felt as if I were wearing freedom on my skin"
Sources:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Malkha-Fabric/311976422925
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Saturday, 13 August 2011
