India has a problem with fashion that most people don't talk about.
It is one of the world's largest producers of textiles — employing over 45 million people across cotton fields, spinning mills, dyeing units, and garment factories. It exports fabric and finished clothing to every major market on earth. And in the last decade, it has become one of the fastest-growing consumers of fast fashion in the world.
The environmental cost of that trajectory is not abstract. It shows up in the groundwater near dyeing clusters in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu. It shows up in the Yamuna and Sabarmati rivers carrying industrial effluent from textile processing zones. It shows up in the cotton fields of Vidarbha, where synthetic pesticide dependency has become a defining crisis.
Eco friendly clothing in India is not simply a lifestyle preference or a global wellness trend imported from somewhere else. It is a response to conditions that exist here, in this country, with direct consequences for the communities and environments that produce the clothes millions of people wear every day.