Frayed culture

Though new Uttarakhand CM Rawat was wrong in his remarks on ripped jeans and what women should wear in public, encouraging young people to explore alternatives to jeans is the right thing to do

Among his many faux pas within days of taking office Uttarakhand Chief Minister Tirath Singh Rawat chose to weigh in on the fraught subject of what women should wear in public. Ripped jeans was his choice of proscription. Let’s forget the old arguments about patriarchy for a moment. Like most Indian male politicians Mr Rawat could hardly have been expected to be anything else. But why are ripped jeans his pet hate? Perhaps, given his unique view of Indian history, Mr Rawat regards it as a symbol of 200 years of India’s enslavement by America? Street-grunge chic, after all, is very much an American inner-city look, a symbol of defiance against social mores, just like the baseball cap worn with the visor reversed. 

The thing is — and this is tough to admit — Mr Rawat may be half right, though for completely different reasons. Of course, he was dead wrong to single out women in his remarks, as his party colleague Smriti Irani, minister for women and child development, robustly pointed out a media conclave on Thursday. But there is something to be said for his comment about children buying expensive jeans — a good brand costs more than Rs 1,000 — and tearing at them with scissors and knives.

At least two thrifty post-independence Indian generations would wince.

Growing up in the seventies and eighties, jeans were such a rarity that the thought of physically ripping them would have been sacrilege. Nor did we try; grateful to even own a pair, we simply wore them out. Admittedly, the process took some years since we took care to preserve our hard-earned jeans — who knew when we’d get another pair. When the fabric finally did give way, usually at the knees, we transformed the jeans into Bermuda shorts in which the unhemmed, frayed edges were the limits of our sartorial daring. The discarded bottom-halves, meanwhile, did great service as sturdy jharans thereafter. No doubt Mr Rawat would approve of such frugal behaviour, though not, perhaps, of the frayed shorts, especially when they are worn by young women.

Since he says his objections to ripped jeans were mainly linked to cultural objections over this unique form of creative destruction, he would have been scandalised had he known that pre-torn jeans typically sell at a premium to normal jeans. And embedded in that extra price is not just a fashion premium but deeply environmentally- labour- and gender-unfriendly processes that offer a good case for discouraging your kids from wearing them.   

Globalised India has transformed jeans from a rarity into a standard item in the wardrobe of every youthful Indian who can afford it, whether as work-wear or everyday casual. But for eco-warriors they are the equivalent of what the fur-coat became in the late 20th century. A pair of jeans has a heavy water footprint — producing a single pair of jeans requires about thousands of gallons of water. That’s just the start. The dyeing process involves the use of harmful synthetic chemicals that form large parts of the toxic effluents from manufacturing plants.   
 

And that’s for a standard pair. Add in the cool variants — stone-washed, ripped and so on — and the eco-footprint grows worse. Stone-washed jeans involve using pumice stones to lighten the colour and produce the worn look. The pumice rub is a mechanical process but it’s the post-wash process that’s the problem. First, disposing of the grit is an environmental headache. Second, shaking out pumice particles from the pockets and seams, which is done manually by workers who end up inhaling the fine dust thrown up in the process. Ditto for acid-washed jeans, which are sponged or sprayed with potassium permanganate, chlorine bleach, or other bleaches — all of which irritate the eyes and respiratory system (and no, it does not protect workers from Covid-19).

Workers suffer similarly in the process of creating ripped jeans, which are typically blasted with sand guns to get the optimum frayed look. Guess who’s inhaling the silica dust from the process? Workers do wear respirators when they use sand blasters but The Workers’ Guide to Health and Safety says they need more advanced ones that have supplied air, which few manufacturers use.  

There are eco-friendly alternatives available for creating distressed jeans – such as computer-driven laser technology, or processes using ozone, which also reduces water consumption per pair of jeans. But these are expensive technologies that do not match the economics of conventional processes. No surprise, almost 60 per cent of jeans are manufactured in developing countries (India is one of the largest manufacturers of denim, mainly for jeans). And from Bangladesh, to China, Vietnam to India and Mexico, women are the major workers in such textile factories and pay the price in poor health for every pair of distressed jeans.

So encouraging young people to explore alternatives to jeans is the right thing to do. After all, in most parts of the world, it’s cool to be woke. In India, well, the jury is still out on that.