At its peak, ahead of the start of a new academic year, each of Solapur’s 700 units at the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation park produces 10,000 uniforms per day. Over 60,000 families are involved in the trade which is estimated to be worth ₹1,000 crore according to a FICCI report.

But a new Maharashtra government order threatens to slow down Solapur’s buzzing industry. Production of government school uniforms, says education minister Deepak Kesarkar’s order, will now be decentralised, and given to women’s self-help groups across the state. Maharashtra’s government schools order 9 million uniforms from Solapur every year, which is nearly one-third of the total number of uniforms produced in the city.

This order puts the livelihood of thousands of people in Solapur, as well as in villages across the border in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, who are employed by the textile industry, at risk. “On the one hand, the government has been trying to get the tag of ‘Uniform City’ for Solapur, then on the other, it cuts our business at the knees,” complained Prakash Pawar, secretary of the Solapur Readymade Kapad Utpadak Sangha (SRKUS). Pawar’s own unit, Prakash Garments, employs over 400 people.

If the government does not reconsider its decision, the city’s economy will suffer greatly, say local stakeholders, especially impacting women who have shifted from beedi-making to sewing. At present about 35,000 women are employed in the uniform business. “We strive to provide employment to as many women as possible so that they do not have to work in the hazardous beedi business. Nearly every home in the areas that neighbor the MIDC park now has a woman or two working in the uniform business. What will happen to them if a bulk of our business goes?” asked Pawar.

Kanchana Goli, who runs a unit of 20 sewing machines in Sunil Nagar, says many of the women she employs have come to her after finishing school. She says her husband, Lakshminarayan Goli, decided to start their business with the aim of providing employment to the women who rolled beedis in the factories nearby for minimum wages. A woman earns up to ₹18,000 a month sewing 300 uniforms whereas in the beedi trade they would earn ₹200 a day after rolling 1,000 beedis.

“But if the government takes away the work of small entrepreneurs like us, we will not be able to expand our industry,” said Goli.

“Until some years ago the beedi rolling industry was big in Solapur and it employed mostly women, but when two of the biggest beedi factories in the city shut down, we received calls from many women who became jobless. Which is when we called these uniform sewing companies to train and employ women,” said Chandrika Chavan, a local social worker who works in the field of women’s rights.

“We started providing women with food, which was a big draw for them to come work in the sewing business. This new decision by the government to provide cloth centrally and give out work orders to women across the state, may be right in principle, but we are not equipped to handle the fallout of this change here,” said Chavan.

How ‘Uniform City’ rose

Solapur’s textile industry dates back to 1874 with the setting up of its first textile unit, Solapur Spinning and Weaving Mills. In 1946, the city began manufacturing the famous Solapur chaddars, said Nitin Pawaer who runs his own uniform manufacturing unit, Sneha Garments. “In 1998, the plan to distribute uniforms to all government schools under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan was announced by the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, which is when we decided to move wholesale to sewing uniforms in the city,” he says how Solapur became India’s largest uniform-manufacturing hub.

The city became so renowned for producing bulk uniforms that it even began getting orders for producing uniforms for taxi drivers in Dubai, it is here that Air India’s uniforms, including those of its pilots and male ground staff are produced, as are uniforms for sailors on INS Chilka, and also for the staff at Tata Motors. “However, the backbone of our industry is the uniforms for government schools under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan,” said Pawar. “If that goes, we will struggle. It was on account of the boom in stitching uniform that so many young men in Solapur decided to stay back and join their family business,” he added.

“In the early 2000s, other states tried to emulate the Solapur model and set up units inviting our people,” said former textile minister Subhash Deshmukh, now a BJP MLA from south Solapur. “When I took charge as a textile minister I gave them several sops to ensure they stayed back in Solapur. I would request Devendra Fadnavis to reconsider this decision of decentralizing the uniform business.”

Other stakeholders, too, say the state government’s proposed revamp of the uniform business may not go as planned. “A similar experiment to buy cloth centrally and then get it stitched from many units, failed in Karnataka. There are many challenges in this business that have not been anticipated. For instance, who will buy the extra cloth if the allotted material for one shirt or tunic falls short?” says Chanbasappa Mhalge, an entrepreneur from Solapur who has been supplying uniforms to Karnataka government schools for over a decade.

School education minister Deepak Kesarkar, the man behind the move, says he decided to change government policy after he received several complaints about the quality of the uniforms. “We have decided to provide uniform cloth under a centralised system as opposed to letting the Solapur units procure on their own. We have also asked the Mahila Arthik Vikas Mahamandal (MAVIM) to train women’s self-help groups in sewing,” he said.

Anita Malage, owner of Yashaswini, a cooperative that produces agro by-products for households, and is the head of a women’s self-help group, said, “We welcome the government’s policy to provide this opportunity to the women’s self-help groups. In Solapur’s uniform industry, almost 35 percent of labourers are women. This will empower them in the city and nearby villages. If we get the jobs independently, we will certainly meet all requirements. Four of 10 women self-help groups are part of the sewing workforce but for sewing uniforms we will also require training and infrastructure to be able to perform.”

In Solapur, the manufacturers are upset that there has been no dialogue with the minister. “If only he had reached to us with what the complaints are or what the government is specifically looking for, we could have made changes. This is a drastic solution,” said SRKUS’s Prakash Pawar.