India, the world's second-biggest producer of cotton, is likely to export 7.69 million bales of the fiber this year, down by 35 percent from last year, due to sluggish demand from China, said the latest USDA report. With a slump in purchases by top cotton consumer China, Bangladesh and Vietnam are emerging as the leading export destinations for India, it added.
India
Kyle A. Richardson is the editorial director of Promo Marketing. He joined the company in 2006 brings more than a decade of publishing, marketing and media experience to the magazine. If you see him, buy him a drink.
Around 1 a.m. on July 4, 2013, a two-story building that housed a garment factory collapsed in Bhiwandi, Mumbai, India. As of Monday July 8, seven people were dead, 15 were injured and four people were still trapped. Heavy monsoon rains are likely to blame, though poor factory conditions were part of the problem.
Mumbai police commissioner Satyapal Singh admitted that the building was illegal and unauthorised construction was taking place.
The building was reportedly being extended, with some suggesting the collapse could have been caused by heavy monsoon rains, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The industry was in for a shocking surprise when India announced an unexpected ban on cotton exports in 2010 and again in 2011. However, according to an official press release, Anand Sharma, Cabinet Minister of Textiles, India, sent a written statement confirming the ban has been lifted. The written statement confirms the 2012/2013 season will have an exportable surplus of 7 million bales.
In a short video on Bloomberg Businessweek, anchor Mia Saini details the expected population shifts that will drastically move the world's labor force from China into India. She cites China's restrictive "one child per family" policy, compared to India's average of three per family, as one reason, then gets into explaining a number of other socio-economic changes that are also predicted to have a great effect.
For the full video, click through to Bloomberg Businessweek.
Responding to the U.S. Department of Labor's listing of international goods in which child or forced labor is used, which includes manufacturing units in India, the Apparel Export Promotion Council of India has stated that the Indian garment industry strictly follows the norms of international labor laws that forbid child labor.
The U.S. department has included India's apparel export sector under its Executive Order 13126 List on the "Prohibition of Acquisition of Products Produced by Forced or Indentured Child Labor."
The 2012 report said that labour law infringement in various forms exist in India in the making of different textiles.
About 600 million people lost power in India on Tuesday when the country's northern and eastern electricity grids failed, crippling the country for a second consecutive day.
The outage stopped hundreds of trains in their tracks, darkened traffic lights, shuttered the Delhi Metro and left nearly everyone—the police, water utilities, private businesses and citizens—without electricity. About half of India's population of 1.2 billion people was without power.
"We seem to have plunged into another power failure, and the reasons why are not at all clear," said Gopal K. Saxena, the chief executive of BSES, an electric company that services South Delhi.
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