Dear meritnation experts,
I found another glitch....
I was neither able to view or download the revision notes of class 7 cbse civics chapter: a shirt in the market
If anyone can view it ( then it might be my internet problem) then plz send it to me at arkshankar.pandey01@gmail.com
Chapter 9 A Shirt in the Market
Conditions of cotton cultivators
Cotton cultivation requires high level of inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides.
Farmers have to incur heavy costs in order to procure them.
To meet these costs, farmers often have to borrow money from local lenders at high interest rates.
There are also times when farmers have no work. Hence, their dependency increases on the local traders.
The local traders do not always offer a fair price to the cultivators.
Conditions of weavers
Cloth made by weavers in villages is brought in cloth markets for sale. The Erode cloth market in Tamil Nadu is one of the largest cloth markets in the world.
Merchants supply cloth brought by weavers to garment manufacturers and exporters all across the country.
Merchants distribute work among weavers based on the orders they receive for cloth. The weavers get yarn from the merchants and supply them the cloth.
The advantage for weavers is that they do not have to purchase the yarn. The sale of the cloth is also handled by the merchants. The disadvantage is that the merchants wield a lot of power and dictate the price to be paid for making the cloth.
The weavers too are ignorant of the prices prevailing in the market.
The arrangement between merchants and weavers is known as putting-out system, where a merchant supplies raw material and receives finished products. This system is prevalent in the weaving industry in most regions of India.
Weaver’s cooperative
Weaver’s cooperatives are a way to earn a higher income for weavers and reduce their dependence on merchants.
Weavers collectively undertake activities like procuring yarn, distributing it among themselves and marketing the cloth.
The government aids the weavers by buying cloth from them at reasonable rates. It also sells the cloth from cooperatives through its stores. An example of such a store is the Co-optex by the Tamil Nadu government.
Conditions at the market
The cloth supplied by merchants is used by exporters to make shirts which are supplied to foreign buyers.
These buyers are mainly businesspersons from US and Europe. They impose strict conditions including low prices and high quality along with timely delivery.
Such pressures force manufacturers and exporters to cut costs in order to maximize their own profit. These are in the form of long working hours and low wages to workers.
The workers are employed on a temporary basis and women workers are paid much lower wages.
The gainers in the market
The chain of markets links a producer of cotton to a buyer at a supermarket. Buying and selling takes place at every step in the chain.
Cultivators and weavers do not make any gains from the market. The merchants and exporters make moderate to good profit. The biggest profits are made by store owners who sell the shirts directly to buyers.
Market and Equality
Everyone does not stand to gain equally in the system of market. Democracy is about getting a fair wage in a market.
While a market provides people with opportunities for work and to sell their products. The maximum earnings from the market belong to the rich and the powerful.
The poor have to depend on the rich and the powerful for loans, raw materials, marketing of their goods and employment.
For this dependence of the workers on the rich, the poor are exploited in the market.
Ways to overcome such exploitations are – ensuring strict adherence to laws and formation of cooperatives of producers.