Nomenclature
1. Introduction
1.2 Scenario of environmental research in the handloom sector
The textile industry comprises organized mill sector and unorganized sector. This industry plays a significant role at the global level in terms of total volume of commodities trade across the various countries and over two-thirds of world exports in textiles and clothing is from the developing countries (WTO, 2016; Comtrade, 2015).
Under the unorganised and semi-organised sectors handloom industry is also an important cottage industry among the developing world where the traditional way of weaving is still practiced in the countries like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal,
Bangladesh, West Indies, Norway, Indonesia, Myanmar, Iran, Turkey and China (Pandit et al., 2013).
In this contemporary world, most of the works are being carried out indoors and, factors such as temperature, lighting, noise, humidity and air flow etc. influence the human performance. Being the indoor activity, it is evident that prosperity of handloom sector as a whole depends on the indoor physical environmental conditions and these factors adjudge a decisive role for better health of the sector in terms of productivity, quality and efficiency. In most of the occasions, these physical environmental aspects were not given due consideration while commissioning the individual handloom workstation in the handloom industry. As all these environmental factors affect the human efficiency and competencies, it is the need of the hours to study the effect of these factors on the human physical, physiological and psychological parameters. A voluminous work has also been done all over the world on indoor physical environment in various industries, offices, residential buildings, aircraft (Koh and Jeyaratnam, 1994;
Höppe and Martinac, 1998; Bauman et al., 1995; Bridger, 2002; Oleson and Parsons, 2002; Nicol, 2004; Frontczak et al., 2011; Dianat et al., 2016; Dianat et al., 2013;
Hossain and Ahmed, 2012; Huang et al., 2012; Vural and Balanlı, 2011; Morris and Dennison, 1995; Hoffmann et al., 2008; Juslén et al., 2007; Gligor, 2004 and Helander, 1995) and internal air quality and air pollution (Garcia et al.,2005, Schwela, 2000;Wang et al., 2014;Mcdowall, 2007; Jones, 1999; Cheremisinoff 2002) but the work done in the field of handloom sector is rarely or scantly reported
India is the second largest producer and exporter of textiles as well as garments in the world (Patil, 2012; Vinayan, 2012; Goswami and Jain, 2014; Corporate Catalyst India, 2015; Comtrade, 2015). Considering the inherent strengths of this textile and handloom industry in terms of a strong raw material base, skilled manpower and low wage costs, this industry has immense potential in the globalised textile economy but encountering tuff competition in terms of low-cost production and free trade with Asian countries. Competition from other low-cost countries like China, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Turkey are posing serious threats to the Indian industry. India is having an appetite for the great demand of textiles due to population size, yet still lagging in terms of per capita consumption when compared with many developed and developing nations. Even though of high production share (59%) of power loom sector in comparison to handloom sector (11%) the contemporary customer has a preference for hand-woven niche innovative handloom products. India produces 85% of the handlooms of the world
country and supplied 95% of the world demand for hand-woven fabrics (Annual Report, 2016-17).
India, being the developing country of the world, the environmental issues especially the indoor physical environmental are not being addressed seriously that may be due to lack of awareness or due to the availability of plenty of unemployed workforces. Moreover, due to continuous industrialization, this area has not been addressed properly which ultimately result in the public health problem. In Indian scenario study on the indoor environmental issues including noise and illumination in various industries have been reported (Bennet et al., 1977; Belbin, 1970; Nag, 2004; Nag and Patel, 1998; Tiwari et al., 1999; Punnett, 1985; Nachemson, 1975; Nehra, 2015;
Varghese and Salim, 2015; Bhar, 2016 and Sanjog et al., 2013). Moreover, some degree of information is available about the work is done in the field of noise and illumination in textile and hosiery industry (Bhattacharya et al., 1989; Uttam, 2015; Shilla, 2014) but the work on the environmental factors (especially in the field of illumination and noise) in handloom is scantly reported.
For the present research, the study on illumination and noise were opted to understand the influence of these environmental factors on the weavers’ physical, physiological and cognitive aspects which in turn affect the performance, visual comfort and quality of output. As illumination and noise are the very crucial parameters which are inevitably required as well as persevere at the handloom workstation in all the sessions throughout the year but the work on these environmental factors have not been properly reported especially in the handloom sector.
It is generally observed that there is the prevalence of low level of illumination and high level of noise throughout the year and thus these two crucial environmental factors are affecting the performance, productivity and psycho-physiological well-being of the weavers involved in the handloom sector. Hence, in the present research these two (illumination and noise) important environmental factors are considered among the various others environmental variables which have sufficient influence on health and performance of the weavers.
Outside the northeastern region, 53.1% of households undertake handloom work for commercial purposes in India. Odisha having the highest (77.5 %) handloom owning household outside the northeastern region and have the privilege of producing the maximum Ikat sarees in India Out of the national figure, 80.97 % of weavers’
households of Odisha producing the highest number of handloom saris and very few
produced other items like dhoti, bed sheets, cloth pieces, towels etc. Odisha enjoys the status of having the highest allied (52.5%) and independent workers (54.8%) as compared to the other states. Also, 87.1% of the weavers in Odisha are working full time for more than 8 h per day for commercial production. Most of the weavers of Bargarh district were engaged in the production of sari (85 %) (Handloom Census of India, 2009 - 2010).
Handloom production of Odisha state for the year 2015-16 was approximately Rs.500 crores and share of the Bargarh district was Rs. 98.42 crores (19.7%). Out of the total handloom Ikat sarees production in Odisha, more than 70% of the Ikat sarees are from Bargarh district which is one of the major revenue generating districts (Indian Handlooms Cluster, 2017), located in western part of Odisha. Bargarh district has been awarded the highest number (8 number. out of the total 18 number) of ‘A’ category handloom cluster (Textile Handloom ImpClusters, 2017). This district is honored to have the highest number of national awardees (51%) and the state awardees (36%) out of the total awardees in the state (Handloom Odisha, 2017). Therefore, as a case study for the current research, Bargarh district in Odisha has been selected.