IIT-Madras graduate Kannan Lakshminarayan dusted a few copies of "Young India" to find Mahatma Gandhi's vision and initiate cotton farmers to use miniature spinning machines right in their village where they grow the crop and increase their income.
Following this, the middleman was out, the long-drawn value chain was short-circuited while farmers became spinners first and subsequently, weavers and even garment makers. In 1920, Mahatma Gandhi had written in "Young India": "I feel convinced that the revival of hand-spinning and hand weaving will make the largest contribution to the economic and the moral regeneration of India. The millions must have a simple industry to supplement agriculture."
The beginning was made from Maharashtra's Vidarbha region, more known for cotton farmers' suicide. It is now set to take root in rural Gujarat following the efforts of a group of businessmen in Ahmedabad who work to empower farmers and their families at their doorstep to produce yarn from their own cotton.
Volun-Teach (voluntary teaching) is the group of businessmen from Ahmedabad that is helping set up plants with miniature spinning machines made by Kannan's Microspin Machine Works in the largely cotton-growing North Gujarat and Saurashtra regions.
The plants will be of farmers, by the farmers and for the farmers. "We have formed an entity called Mahek Producers Company, which is essentially a 'producers company' envisaged under the Companies Act in an amendment implemented two years ago."
"Under this, only those who are 'primary producers' engaged in an activity connected with or related to primary produce can be the share holders," explained Ravin Vyas, a volunteer of Volun-Teach. Some 150-odd Volun-Teach volunteers regularly visit villages and teach youngsters. "During one such visit, we identified two villages - Bunav in North Gujarat and Gohilwad region consisting areas of two districts of Saurashtra, where they grow only cotton," Vyas told Mail Today.
He said, "We will train farmers in operating the spinning machines that will be bought through debt financing." Microspin's founder and CEO Kannan said that besides farmers forming their own producers company, local entrepreneurs could set up the spinning machines and employ farmers in the units.
"A farmer or his family member employed at such units can make Rs.4,000-Rs.8,000 a month. This is an additional income for them, besides what they earn from their cotton crop," Kannan told Mail Today.
Vyas said: "Over 60 per cent farmers don't have own land but they work on farms. Such projects would help, as it could check migration to cities for work."
The concept has taken a big leap in Buldana district of Maharashtra where farmers' cooperative credit society has created an integrated spinning mill using Microspin machines.
Kannan said that this would "probably be the only place in the world where a farmer brings cotton to the in-gate and it goes out as a fabric from the out-gate."
This is possible because Kannan has evolved a new technology called BlowCard that "simplifies a part of the spinning process by integrating blending, blow-room and carding activities carried out in a conventional spinning mill. This has also reduced energy and infrastructural expenses besides the cost procuring finances.
Kannan claimed that the product is of higher value than the one produced in a conventional spinning mill. Besides, the miniature machines come for Rs.2 crore as against Rs.100 crore for a normal spinning machine. The entire chain would entail an investment of Rs.6 crore.
He said, "Only about five per cent of the income in the textile value chain goes to farmers." He added that as many as 1,200 clusters could be created in the country even if five per cent of locally made cotton was diverted to such projects and some 370 of these could be in Gujarat.
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