Chennai's Tula has made strides in revitalising desi cotton production

Over 2,700 litres of clean water go into making one shirt of inorganic cotton. And effluents from dyeing pollute life-giving water sources

Imagine being able to say exactly where the cotton fibre for your garment has been cultivated, handspun and woven into fabric. As people across the world wake up to the hidden costs — both ecological and environmental — of their mass-produced garments, Tula, a Chennai-based non-profit, has been working for the past five years with cotton farmers in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra to change not only what they grow, but how they grow it. “We ask farmers to sow only desi cotton without pesticides, inorganic fertiliser or even irrigation,” says Anantha Sayanan (he prefers the moniker “Ananthoo”), founder of Tula. In return, Tula promises a hundred per cent buyback of the cotton the farmers produce. It then gets it spun and woven in the same village and tailored into garments, which it markets across the country. 

Here’s how they began. In 2013, Ananthoo and a group of friends met marginalised dry-land cotton farmers in Tamil Nadu villages and discovered alarming facts. Five per cent of India’s arable land is sowed with cotton — yet 55 per cent of pesticides in India are used on it. Over 2,700 litres of clean, safe water go into making one shirt of inorganic cotton. And effluents from the dyeing process pollute life-giving water sources. Meanwhile, production-driven mechanised cloth mills are driving small-scale farmers, weavers and spinners out of jobs. 

Photos: Courtesy Tula

The way forward, they realised, was to go backwards. “We needed to revive the traditional farming methods that these farmers already understood well,” says Ananthoo. So they incentivised small farmers to grow desi cotton, which was irrigated by rain. Additionally, they set up decentralised spinning, dyeing and weaving units nearby. An initial loan of Rs 1.5 million from friends and family got them started with 30 small farmers in 2013. “Next year, we expanded to Karnataka, and the following year to Maharashtra,” he says. Today, they work with 300 cotton farmers and have discovered that desi cotton cultivation has manifold hidden advantages. For one, as it is traditionally multi-cropped, desi cotton allows farmers to spread their risk. “Some of our farmers are profiting as much from growing chilli (often multi-cropped with cotton) as they are from cotton,” he says. Further, desi cotton is drought and pest-resistant. “Consequently, desi cotton cultivation is economically viable, although the more resource-intensive hybrid and BT cotton varieties have higher yields,” says Ananthoo. The Tula team also found that rural women performed several unpaid tasks in cotton-processing. “We now pay them separately for traditionally unpaid tasks like starching and reeling,” he says. Several designers have donated designs to Tula and they now have two tailoring units.

To advocate for desi cotton, Ananthoo travels across the country for lectures and exhibitions. “Initially, we actually sold Tula garments out of suitcases,” he smiles. Tula also has a volunteer-run shop in Chennai, which accounts for 50 per cent of their turnover (which was Rs 5 million in 2017). “We aim to return the initial loan of Rs 1.5 million by next year,” says Ananthoo. In future, Tula aims to widely share its eminently replicable model that combines sustainable agriculture with marketing support for farmers and civil society organisations across the country. Meanwhile, it is reintroducing to Indian fashion Gandhi’s original conception of khadi — not simply as a historical symbol of independence but as a means of creating sustainable rural livelihoods whilst leaving the lightest possible footprint on the planet.

For more, visit tula.org.in. 

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