Description of India’s Textile and Apparel Sector

Abstract

A fiber is a particle, whose length is much greater than its thickness. Yarn is a continuous, often plied, strand composed of either fibers or filaments. A fabric is a material which is pliable, in short. All the processes involved in manufacturing fabrics from a bunch of fibers can be collectively termed as “textile industry”. The process of converting a bunch of fibers into yarns is called spinning. For cotton, this starts from obtaining ‘bale’, which is a compressed mass of cotton fibers, prepared by a ginning factory, where cotton fibers are separated from their seeds mechanically. Its weight is about 170 kilograms. Bales are fed to opening and cleaning machines in the ‘blowrooms’ to remove foreign particles, dirt and dust, collectively called ‘trash’. The cleaned mass of fibers is then ‘carded’ to aligned strands of fibers. A saying about spinning goes thus: well-carded is half-spun.