Revival of COTTON ROUTE: For Sustainable Income Generation for Farmers & Weavers of Coromandel Coast

We are aware that our farmers are deprived of right sustainable income. The news of farmers' suicide is very common nowadays. But we should not just be blaming inadequate rainfall and hefty loans. The history gives an entirely different picture.

Recently, through translation of archived documents, we have found that the region of Tamilnadu and coastal Andhra Pradesh were one of the largest producers of premium cotton in the world, especially, coromandel-cotton. The record states that more than 4500 ships visited this region to exchange gold for cotton. Currently, Tamil Nadu and coastal-Andhra Pradesh rank within top 10 producers in the country. But the question is how the farmers are not able to get sustainable income? Our finding says that during the post-independence period, the indigenous cotton was replaced with foreign-cotton-seeds systematically, which made the farmers fully dependent on foreign seeds and chemicals.

Historically, coromandel cotton was called as Palaykat cotton and its by-product is Palaykat Lungi. The word Palaykat is still commonly used in Malaysia, Singapore, Spain, Srilanka, Saudi Arabia and UAE. The lungi is common clothing product in Asia, and now it has become a fashion in the upscale European market.

We, AARDE, have established a sustainable income source for the fisherwomen of Pulicat through our palm-leaf craft marketing plan. Similarly, we would like to improve income for the farmers of the region. Pulicat region stretches from Kakinada (AP) to Marakanam (TN) through its lagoon and Buckingham canal. We are strategizing to revive the indigenous cotton through sustainable farming and scale up sales of its byproduct with the help of technology. Our strong presence in Pulicat and Chennai would help us to easily establish cotton by-product production and scale-up the income for the farmers through E-Commerce. The stages of our action plan are

1) Identify farmers and weavers in Pulicat & Buckingham canal region.

2) Establishing indigenous cotton seeds bank through the help of agriculture universities.

3) Providing adequate sources or micro-finance to the farmers to grow Indian cotton

4) Providing adequate financial support and raw-materials to the weavers for production of clothing material

5) Tapping ASEAN and Gulf Countries market through the support of international NGOs for the sales. Developing direct marketing through E-Commerce in India

6) Research and Development to improve production, design, and quality.

This sustainable model will bring positive change to the conservation of Pulicat lagoon.

Our action plan is holistic and sustainable, and shall leave a positive impact on the Coromandel Coast. The revival of cotton-route will not only bring additional income to the farmers and weaver, it will re-establish the cultural-landscape which existed before independence. The impact of this strategy will bring some positive changes which are:

1) Indigenous cotton seeds will come back to farmers

2) Handloom will get boost and income of the weavers will improve

3) Encouraging sustainable farming will revive the soil and boost earthworms

4) Will stop the migration of weavers and farmers to cities

5) Will improve village economy

6) Bring new designs and products of Indian and Coromandel culture.

7) Farmers will have direct marketing channel to sell products to markets around the world.

8) Farmers suicide will be contained

9) Will revive ethnic lungi cloth culture.