1. Introduction
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
—Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)
Cashmere is an extremely fine specialty natural fiber [
1]. In global cashmere production, the contribution of India is significantly smaller than that of China and Mongolia [
2,
3]. However, the products—especially shawls—handmade in the Kashmir valley (India), are arguably unmatched in sophistication, aesthetics, expertise, and artistic value [
3]. Historically, the cashmere craft has been the most significant ambassador of Kashmir for centuries. The characteristics of the handmade cashmere articles produced in Kashmir are unique and much sought after in the domestic and international markets since the 18th century [
4]. In fact, the term ‘cashmere’ was coined to represent the craft originated from Kashmir and signifies the impact of the traditional cashmere (also known as
Pashmina) industry in the region and in the world [
3]. More than 12 million inhabitants live in and around the Kashmir region; and around 7 million reside in the Kashmir valley [
5]. In Kashmir, most of the population rely on manual or semi-skilled professions for their sustenance [
6]. Among the employment options in the Kashmir valley, the cashmere industry is one of the most sought-after options for the local populace which provides livelihood to more than 300,000 artisans associated in different capacities with this industry [
7].
The traditional cashmere supply chain comprises of: raw cashmere fiber procurement, fiber processing (dehairing, cleaning), transformation (spinning, dyeing, weaving, washing, embroidery), and product labelling to generate value towards the final deliverable to the consumer [
3]. In the traditional cashmere industry, a significant number are women spinners who are solely responsible for spinning the yarn by hand. Manual spinning is one of the most convenient jobs for the women of the region for a few reasons, such as that it can be carried out within the confines of their home [
8] and is not time dependent. These aspects attract most of the women of the region, especially in the rural areas, to get involved with the traditional craft. For weaving, there are more than 500 handloom cooperative societies registered in the Kashmir region with a membership of more than 15,000 weavers in the organized sector and 20,000 weavers in the unorganized sector [
9,
10].
In the cashmere industry, tradition plays a significant role in evolving the pashmina craft over centuries, and capturing this aspect is critical for the present study to provide a rich and holistic view of the traditional cashmere supply chains.
Kashmiri artisanal communities are foremost in producing a variety of cashmere articles which significantly contributes to the economy and social aspects of the region [
6,
8]. However, it is important to know that, among all cashmere products, shawl making through manual processes is the major source of revenue generation for hundreds of thousands of artisans in the Kashmir valley [
7,
8]. Based on the findings of a market survey of cashmere retailer websites conducted in the study, 3582 cashmere products under 36 unique product categories were identified (
Appendix A). Among all the products, the most significant product categories found were shawl (32.10%) followed by scarf (15.16%), stole (13.12%) and sweater (12.53%). This signifies the importance of handmade shawls in the cashmere industry. Due to a range of factors explored in the present paper, the traditional cashmere manufacturing practices cannot catch up with the changing and ever evolving market trends, and as a result, the centuries-old traditional practices are affected, resulting in a paradigm shift in the cashmere supply chain operations. It is important to know that Kashmir has been involved in political turmoil for the past few decades [
10] which significantly affected the infrastructural development of the region impacting socio-economic aspects of the local populace considerably. In 2014, the government of India initiated the ‘Make in India’ program to encourage the manufacturing sector under various categories [
11,
12]. In this initiative, the textile industry is considered as one of the sectors for governmental support and promotion for the sustainable development in India. For these reasons, it is a critical time to explore the impact on the artisan communities in Kashmir who have been experiencing economic and social challenges in the traditional craft industry for long. Moreover, the environmental impact of the changes the cashmere industry is going through is yet to be identified.
The present paper results from a project investigating the key themes of sustainability, product quality and value in the traditional cashmere industry operations in Kashmir, India. The research investigates and reports on the main cashmere supply chain stages, highlighting practices and trends that are of relevance to the issues surrounding economic, social and environmental sustainability. Based on this aim, the primary research question that is explored in the present paper is:
What are the key sustainability issues prevalent in the present-day traditional cashmere industry in Kashmir, India?
This can be broken into three sub-questions:
What is the financial impact of the industry practices on the artisan communities?
What are the social concerns among the artisan communities?
How do the cashmere industry practices affect the environment?
In this research, the impact on financial, social and environmental sustainability in the transition from using the traditional approaches to adopting the modern-day practices surrounding the cashmere industry was explored using the case study approach. For the present research, traditional cashmere industry in Kashmir, India is selected as a single case study. Through this, economic and social impact on the artisan communities was identified and the environmental impact of the existing industry practices was also ascertained. Along with documentary evidence, the other populations of interest considered in the study included cashmere retail websites, artisans and the government officials who were involved with the cashmere industry in Kashmir, India. From the sustainability perspective, cashmere processes and the affected artisan communities formed the basis for analysis. The findings of the study suggest that, during the transitional phase, the traditional cashmere industry artisans have been significantly impacted with the paradigm shift in the industry practices. Especially, woman spinners and the weavers are subject to socio-economic challenges due to the lack of revenue generation opportunities in their traditional craft. Furthermore, the advent of mechanization in the traditional processes coupled with improper wage structures and corruption in the industry practices impacted the vulnerable artisan communities considerably. However, attempts have been made by the financial and infrastructural support through various polices by the government institutions. To the best understanding of the authors, this is a first attempt to address economic, social and environmental impact of the paradigm shift in the traditional cashmere industry. In the present research, contribution surrounding sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) regarding a traditional craft industry is made. Through this, an attempt is carried out to stretch the boundaries of the existing body of knowledge surrounding SSCM.
In the remainder of the paper,
Section 2 presents the research background covering SSCM and its related aspects. This is followed by the research methods considered in the study (
Section 3). The results obtained from the primary data are presented in
Section 4 and prior to the conclusion in
Section 6, a detailed discussion based on the research findings is covered in
Section 5.
2. Research Background
Sustainability is a large and multi-faceted academic field and literature surrounding the sustainability aspects is transdisciplinary and involves multiple study domains. Of relevance to this study, the body of literature surrounding sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) and its various approaches and perspectives across different industrial contexts is considered. Mainly, the emphasis of the articles is on the textile industry since it is closely related with the scope of the present study.
In literature, the terms ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’ are frequently used interchangeably, however, there is a semantic distinction between the two [
13,
14]. Sustainability is a multi-dimensional and multi-scale concept [
15] involving transdisciplinary areas where social and physical sciences interact [
16]. The Brundtland report [
17] on World Commission on Environment and Development defines sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Whereas, sustainable development comprises of economic and social development which protect and enhance the natural environment and social equity [
18]. Simplistically, sustainable development can be considered as a holistic process to achieve sustainability objectives [
14,
18].
For sustainable development, economic, social, and environmental concerns, also known as the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) approach is considered by the industry practitioners and academics [
12,
13,
14]. For economic sustainability, the major focus of production systems is on economic growth, therefore, as a result, other sustainability dimensions such as environmental aspects or social concerns are seldom considered [
14,
19,
20,
21]. Hence, it is expected that economic sustainability decisions must incorporate other dimensions of sustainability [
22]. Social sustainability aims to: mitigate poverty within the economic and environmental framework of the system through cultural identity, empowerment and gender equity [
23,
24], comply with labor laws [
25], manage people’s skills [
26] and facilitate conducive conditions for the inhabitants to fulfil their needs [
27]. Among other considerations, environmental sustainability includes the impact of operations: on ecology [
28], climate change [
29], which not only impacts the environment but also has implications for economic sustainability [
23], and supply chain networks [
30].
Sustainability in supply chains is a major area of research. A sustainable supply chain (SSC) has been defined as the “management of material, information and capital flows as well as cooperation among companies along the supply chain while taking goals from all three dimensions of sustainable development i.e., economic, environmental and social into account which are derived from customer and stakeholder requirements” [
15]. In supply chain operations, TBL dimensions help organizations improve sustainable outcomes by integrating them along the chain operations [
15,
31,
32,
33]. In literature, significant focus has been given to sustainability studies referring to developed economies. However, in developing countries, sustainability considerations have started to gain considerable attention in the supply chain operations across a range of industrial settings [
34,
35]. For instance, sustainable supply chain management practices from the perspective of multi-stakeholder approach are considered to implement the inter influences of SSCM practices [
36] and to identify the barriers in the remanufacturing of the automobile parts [
32] in the Indian automotive industry. A multi-tier sustainable supply chain management study highlights the effect of governance in SSCM in Chinese mining and mineral industry [
35]. Similarly, in a multi-tier mineral supply chain, SSCM issues link upstream and downstream operations [
37]. The encouraging outcomes achieved in Malaysian manufacturing units [
38] and in oil and gas industry [
39] represent few instances of the broad spectrum of SSCM scenarios.
Particularly, in the context of the small and medium enterprise (SME) manufacturing sector in India, the major discourse is on pollution control and labor laws rather than on integrating overall sustainability efforts [
12]. One of the reasons for the lack of motivation in the expenditure on sustainability is low or no expectation of return on the investment [
40]. Based on experts’ opinion, the manufacturing industry has serious implications on environment, and without adopting sustainability practices, the chances for growth of Indian manufacturing industry are minimal [
12]. Therefore, based on the traditional sustainability perspective, the onus is on the focal organization to govern the supply chain as they are responsible to design the product and deliver it to the consumer [
15]. For this reason, pressure needs to be exerted on the focal firm through non-regulatory stakeholders such as NGOs to push them for sustainable operations [
41]. Recently, in literature, achieving sustainability considering Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is gaining attention as another perspective for sustainable development. In 2015, considering the TBL approach, the SDGs were developed in 17 categories by the United Nations (UN) where these goals are ‘‘integrated and indivisible and balance the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, social and environmental’’ [
42]. To implement the 17 SDGs, the UN approved the 2030 Agenda for the betterment of the TBL globally. Among these, SDG 8, i.e., ‘Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all’ and SDG 9 ‘Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation’ [
43,
44] resonate with the sustainable development requirements for the textile industry in India.
Sustainability aspects in the textile industry are primarily ascribed to energy consumption in yarn manufacturing, dyeing, washing and product finishing processes [
45,
46]. Textile supply chains are known for labor-intensive manufacturing and emitting significant environmental pollution through chemical discharge and carbon emissions [
47]. Environmental sustainability considerations are significant for the textile supply chains due to the considerable use of chemicals, energy and water resources [
47,
48]. The role of human intervention in the textile industry, especially in the traditional craft industry such as cashmere, plays a critical role in supply chain operations. Similarly, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) which is closely related with social sustainability [
26] is an important factor in achieving sustainability in the textile industry. There is a growing recognition among apparel product consumers regarding the visibility of CSR considerations across various supply chain aspects [
49,
50]. CSR reports are helpful in establishing trust with the stakeholders by giving insights into the initiative’s the organizations take to achieve their sustainability goals [
51] and to meet legal and ethical expectations of the stakeholders [
52]. Furthermore, regarding achieving sustainability in luxury products such as cashmere, product design, distribution strategy, country of origin and counterfeit issues are critical factors in the operations [
53]. A study on the Iranian cashmere industry further indicated that price fluctuations, variable market conditions and the constraints surrounding different value addition stages are significant in the chain operations [
54]. Moreover, a shift from the marketing strategies to generating consumer awareness of the cashmere processes is observed in the cashmere retail operations [
55] and branding [
2] aspects.
In this work, based on the sustainability domains discussed in this section, results are presented in
Section 4 and a discussion based on the research findings is presented in
Section 5.
5. Discussion
A traditional cashmere supply chain (referred as TCSC) is presented in
Figure 4. Due to the significance and the impact on the chain operations, the TCSC is presented through two broad layers; cashmere processes (CP) and Institutional Support (IS). The first layer (CP) consists of major cashmere processes whereas the second layer (IS) captures the support provided by various government institutions for cashmere chain operations. The first layer in
Figure 4 presents the traditional cashmere processes and captures the issues which propagate through a range of sequential processes and influence social, economic and environmental sustainability. The second layer (IS) represents the initiatives taken and the support provided by various government institutions to different stakeholders in the chain. The two layers, i.e., cashmere processes and institutional support are connected through color-coded arrows to represent their relationships and the impact they have on the traditional cashmere supply chain operations. The arrows emanating from these processes affect the traditional cashmere operations in many ways.
The solid red arcs indicate the adverse effect of mechanization on the process itself and on the subsequent processes it is connected to in the supply chain. For instance, in the processing stage, the red arc indicates the negative impact of using mechanical processes for fiber dehairing. This will have a knock-on effect on spinning and weaving. Whereas, the dashed red arcs represent the impact of mechanization on the dehairing process depending on whether the process is carried out manually or mechanically. As shown in
Figure 4, current traditional cashmere industry practices such as mechanization of processes and non-conformance of standards directly impacts fiber dehairing [
69], yarn spinning [
70] and fabric weaving [
71,
72] (
Appendix B) processes.
Due to the present day practices the current state of operations not only impacts the physical and mechanical properties of cashmere yarn and products but also results in economic, social and environmental sustainability issues. Prior to the existing practices in the traditional cashmere industry, for spinners and weavers, the major source of income was from manually spinning the yarn and weaving cashmere articles on the handlooms. For instance, due to mechanization, low monetary returns to the artisans leads to issues such as insufficient wages and delayed payments from the manufactures. Manufacturers and retailers are considered as the major players in the cashmere industry and the artisans are bound to work on their conditions [
8]. Based on the findings, it is observed that manufacturers who are dealing with large volumes of pashmina products get the work done outside Kashmir where they easily procure the yarn made from mechanized processes which compromises physical and mechanical properties of the yarn [
Appendix C]. For manufacturers, pure cashmere fiber is expensive to procure as opposed to the blended fiber which, unlike pure fibers, can be used on the mechanized processes. As a result, in many instances, manufacturers deliberately opt for the blended fiber to cut down the operational costs, which leaves women spinners out of work ultimately affecting their livelihood. Similarly, due to mechanization, for weavers, weaving opportunities on the handlooms are diminishing. Therefore, financially, the most severely affected categories of the artisans are the spinners and weavers.
Furthermore, for these artisan categories, there is a considerable impact on revenue generation opportunities due to inconsistent wage structure prevalent in the industry. Study findings suggest that, in an industry which is growing and reaching out to the markets beyond its conventional territories, there is little reason not to redefine the wage structures to help sustain one of the most significant contributors of the cashmere supply chain—the artisans. Moreover, to make the matter worse, new entrants who have limited prior experience or expertise in the cashmere industry invest the capital as their side business. These new entrants have further diluted the wage structure for the already struggling spinners and weavers who are willing to take up any work opportunity that they come across. Another aspect leading to the financial issue is the lack of cashflow at the disposal of the artisans. Despite the efforts made by the government support, given the opportunity to choose any other vocation, it is likely that artisans would prefer to switch to other trades. However, many artisans are carrying out the traditional craft since most of them have little choice to generate revenue for sustenance. It is important to know that the majority of the women involved with spinning activities belong to the lower strata of the society and do not have formation education. Unwillingly though, these women artisans who are more vulnerable than the other affected class of artisans such as weavers, are left with barely any other option but to abandon their unique and special craft. Apart from the artisans who are already impacted by the intrusion of mechanization, there are many educated jobless youth with tertiary qualifications who are looking for work opportunities in the region and elsewhere. Traditional pashmina industry could have been a potential source of revenue generation for these youth. However, the advent of mechanization in different cashmere processes have deprived them of the option their ancestors practiced for centuries.
Regarding the production practices prevalent in the traditional cashmere industry, considerable environmental degradation takes place due to the existing cashmere operations. It is critical to know that not only has the handloom industry been one of the most significant contributors for employment and revenue generation in the region, but it also has no adverse impact on the environment. Due to the surge in productivity of cashmere products (through mechanized processes) the impact of increased processing has detrimental effect on the environment. For instance, the effect of existing industry practices is observed on dyeing and washing processes [
73]. The dyeing process results in the wastewater which contains more than 70 toxic chemicals that flow in the rivers and streams in the developing countries [
47]. To address this, along with the investment in pollution control mechanism, environmental management systems need to be adopted [
74,
75] to reduce waste water [
45,
46] pollution and carbon emissions [
76].
The green arcs indicate the encouraging influence of the institutional initiatives among the artisan communities across various chain stages. In an attempt to revive and streamline the traditional cashmere industry practices, at Crafts and Development Institute, entrepreneurial initiatives and educational programs at various levels (Diploma and Masters) are introduced to encourage the younger generation to be a part of their cultural heritage. In consultation with the experts from premier educational institutes of India, curriculum has been developed to educate the present generation of learners about the intricacies of establishing and managing a successful entrepreneurial entity. Through different qualifications, technical aspects, nuances of the craft and business insights associated across the traditional cashmere processes are covered to address the gaps existing in the industry. Trust is an integral part of the traditional cashmere operations, especially for consumers, this aspect is even more critical to have confidence in the product. Through an official website [
77], a traceability mechanism is provided to ensure credibility in the manufacturing of the product. Apart from this, technological advancements also help in eco-friendly and pollution-free manufacturing practices [
78].
The black arcs denote both adverse and beneficial impact of the institutional support on various supply chain aspects through quality testing, financial support, by establishing standards and through the provision of technological mechanisms across the transformation and labelling stages. For a sustainable supply chain, the social and economic status of the vulnerable sections need to be improved by providing fair, favorable and equal opportunities [
79,
80] and financial support [
81]. The artisans are constrained with resources and are dependent to work either for the manufacturer or the middlemen. The institutions are expected to ensure fair wages and healthy working conditions for the workforce [
82] to alleviate poverty and for the welfare of the workers [
83]. Therefore, to mitigate the prevailing wage problems in the industry and to encourage the artisans to continue to pursue the traditional cashmere craft, the government provides a financial loan of up to INR100,000 to help establish and/or revive their practice. For instance, with the financial support, weavers are encouraged to get back on their feet and to function independently. However, the financial support is not managed well enough to keep track of the outcome from the investment, and at times, leads to a stressful situation to the weaver in repaying the loan amount with interest [
8]. Artisan communities associated with spinning and weaving, manufacturers and retailers have mixed opinions on provisions provided by government institutions. For instance, the artisans are the beneficiaries from the efforts made by the government as it provides them work opportunities to carry on with the traditional practices and be able to sustain themselves economically. However, for manufacturers and retailers, on one hand the institutional support through quality testing and labelling provide credibility to their products but also lead to expensiveness and the dilution of their existing brands. Similarly, by introducing quality standards through the state-of-the art technology, government institutions have provided a mechanism to streamline quality in the spinning and weaving processes. However, this comes with a cost for the manufacturer and/or the retailer. In case the randomly selected product sample is rejected, then the entire lot is considered unfit by the quality assurance department. It is beneficial for the industry to conform to stringent quality checks but at the same time it is expensive for the manufacturer/retailer to run the risk of having a monetary loss. Therefore, for decision makers it is critical to weigh in all the aspects surrounding economic, social and environmental dimension across cashmere supply chain operations.
Based on the data collected from the primary sources (
Table 1 and
Table 2), a summary of the impact of traditional cashmere industry practices on various stakeholders and on the social, environmental and economic sustainability is presented in
Table 3.