After several years of consistent increase in growth and profits India’s textile industry is currently faltering under the global economic crisis as a result of a massive drop in export requests from the US and other Western countries (50 per cent of India’s textile production is for export).  Around 35 million people are employed through India’s textile industry, the majority of the lower tiers being women. Textiles are the second largest industry in the country (agriculture is first),  and is largely responsible for the growth in India’s middle class in the last ten years.

Women in this industry earn nearly $4 per day, on average, allowing their families the opportunity to elevate their standard of living  and offering them a future beyond physical labor. The economic crisis has changed these positive trends. Millions of workers are now facing a dramatic drop in wages forcing them below the poverty line.

Ajay Chhibber, assistant secretary general of the U.N. Development Program in New York, explained the impact of this crisis on India’s women in a recent interview:

“This will affect a generation. A girl who drops out of school will be an illiterate mother the rest of her life… You had a financial crisis. It’s now become an economic crisis. The next phase of this in 2009 will be a social crisis,” he said.

Women raised in poorer neighborhoods who form a large bulk of the textile industries breadwinners are the hardest hit—as the industry offered a culturally acceptable niche for women who have difficultly securing jobs in relatively lucrative professions thought to be more male oriented. Correspondingly, the industry slump has contributed to a lapse in the pace of India’s development growth—leading to a decrease in numbers of middle class families and an increase in poverty rates.

The trend is alarming, especially considering India’s status as the second largest country in the world– population 1 billion+. It reveals the importance of women as major players both in the global economic debate and as vital contributors to the overall prosperity of developing countries.

The opinions expressed in this text are those of the author.