West Bengal

Kolkata is the most important cotton textile producing centre of West Bengal. Cotton goods are also produced in Haora, Hugli, Murshidabad, Panihar, Sirampur, and Shiampur.

In addition to these, Ajmer, Beawar, Bhilwara, Ganganagar, Kishangarh,Jaipur, Kota, Pali, and Udaipur in Rajasthan-, Amritsar, Ludhiana, and Phagwara in Punjab-, Bhopal, Dewas, Gwalior, Indore, Jabalpur, Ratlam, and Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh-, East Godavari, Guntur, Hyderabad, Secunderabad, and Udaygiri in Andhra Pradesh-, Gaya, Bhagalpur and Patna in Bihar, Bhiwani, Ilissar and Rohtak in Haryana-, Bangalore, Belgaum, Chennapatnam, Chitradurga, Gulbarga, Mangalore, and Mysore in Karnataka-, Alleppey, Alwaye, Kollam, Thiruvananthapuram, and Trichur in Kerala are the important cotton textile centres in the country.

In India, cotton goods are produced in the following three types of sectors: (i) Mills, (ii) Powerlooms, and (iii) Handlooms. The production of different sectors of cotton textile has been given in Table 11.3.

Table 11.3 Production of Fabrics (in millions ofsq metres)

Source: Economic Survey, 2006-07.

It may be observed from Table 11.4 that in 1950-51 the total production of cotton textile was only 4225 million sq metres which increased to 55,000 sq metres in 2008-09 recording an increase of over 130 per cent.

Table 11.4 Production of Cotton Cloth

Source: India 2010, p. 643.