OF NETWORKS AND MARKETS - THE RISE AND RISE OF A SOUTH INDIAN TOWN, THE EXAMPLE OF TIRUPPURS COTTON KNITWEAR INDUSTRY

Tiruppur town is the center of a tightly clustered range of activities related to the cotton knitwear industry. The successful and dramatic expansion which has taken place over the last 15 years has meant many more jobs, limited technological improvement, improved quality in yarn and fabric and an increasingly diverse range of garments. For the larger firms in the industry, access to export markets has been the driving force to improving their competitiveness. Wages remain low and working conditions poor, however, perhaps partly because capital concentration has not, on the whole, been accompanied by centralized, vertically integrated production. Nevertheless, clustering and dense interfirm networks provide advantages for firms of all sizes since process specialization is spatially divisible.