Earlier, we had to SINGLE SIDE WOVEN EDGE SATIN pay no tax on fabric and yarn but now they are taxable and this would adversely impact the chikan industry in UP," she said. The artisans who do chikan embroidery are also facing an uncertain future."We will also have to start paying 12 per cent service tax for employing artisans for various steps of manufacturing chikan clothes and this is bound to lead to a proportionate hike in the cost of the garment," said Haroon, a wholesaler. Since the past one week, I and my three sister have not received any order from the sellers even though this is the peak season for us," said Nikhat Khan, who does chikan embroidery. If we further increase the prices of finished products, the sales will dip further," said Arup Khanna, a retail dealer.5 lakh artisans, mostly women, who depend on the chikan business for their livelihood."Chikan goods have been exempted from taxation since Independence but now the government has put them in the taxable category of readymade clothes," said Pramesh Rastogi, member of the Akhil Bharatiya Udyog Vyapar Mandal. Ms Runa Banerjee co-founder of Sewa (Self Employed Women’s Association) said, "After GST, there is an overall increase of 28 per cent in prices of stitched as well as unstitched chikan clothes and this has already led to a drop in sale. 

According to him, the cost of chikan garments has increased by 25 to 30 per cent after GST and the artisans are being rendered jobless because their wages are being cut."We are not taking any new orders and are neither getting raw material under the picture become clearer.There are 11 processes before the embroidered cloth finally reaches the customers and these include including dyeing, cutting, sewing, printing, embroidery, washing, "charak", etc and more than six workers are employed at each step.There are at least 3."We earn Rs 1,500-2,000 per month and are already facing tough competition from machine embroidered chikan cloth that is coming in from China. This is a hand- embroidery based industry and workmanship naturally comes at a price."Chikan garments below Rs 1,000 will now invite 5 per cent tax and those costing more will be taxed at 12 per cent.Lucknow: The famous chikan industry in Lucknow is facing a major crisis, following the GST which brings the industry in the tax net. The chikan industry is no longer as robust as it used to be with consumers opting for readymade wear," he added.

Vallabhbhai Patel wisely decided to increase the strength of paramilitary forces so that the Army does not have to be employed in maintaining order while fighting the enemy on the border. The police has not shed its image of a colonial force to become a people-friendly force in a democracy as it has in Britain. Yet it is the most neglected and marginalised in decision-making and in emoluments.

It has more generals than soldiers. The Army’s primary role is defence of the border and secondary to assist the civil authority in restoring law and order when called upon to do so, plus provide succour during natural disasters. Innocent people were killed, 17 railway stations were burnt. True the strength of the force is today much more than before and policing is becoming increasingly complex, but does that justify such a massive increase of police generals in the state The IAS has, of course, done better many times over, and so has the Army to keep up with the Joneses, but the latter to a lesser extent. He saw increasing violence in the country during the coming years. Five battalions of the Army restored order in two days. The police station is shunned by the common man who sees it as a centre of corruption and torture. Field Marshal Auchinleck decided that the Indian Army should continue with wartime olive green. The latter have been increasingly adopting the same uniform as the Army. At this rate, in the event of war, they may be fighting their own wars as a parallel force. Property worth Rs 28,000 crore was destroyed. Yet the government remained paralysed.Reverting to the Jat stir in Haryana, there was total chaos for four days from February 19 to 23.A newspaper reported that the Army had been called out in Haryana and placed under the additional director-general of police. All this should be a matter of national concern. After the war there was a popular desire to revert to khaki from olive green, which was used by the Indian Army in Burma for camouflage. I was also officiating as the Brigade Commander at that time. The strong reaction of Army veterans against this went viral on the Internet. It is the only apolitical Army of the developing world. Several buses and cars were also burnt on the highway and their passengers dragged and beaten. In the process, the police lost its culture and ethos. Green uniform, different from the police, will have a deterrent effect.The Indian Army has been the ultimate weapon of the nation and it has never failed to rise to the occasion in service of the nation. Besides the civil police there were five state armed police battalions and 10 Central Reserve Police Force battalions available to the state government. A new level of command between state police headquarters and deputy inspector-general of police range, the inspector-general zone, has been introduced. The Army is never placed under the police or even the state government. An IAS officer of the Haryana cadre wrote in the Tribune, "Bloated civil police and paramilitary forces that continue to grow, but remain incapable of maintaining law and order. Its protocol status has been persistently lowered.Unscrupulous political leaders using the police as their handmaiden and partners in crime and corruption are primarily responsible for this most unfortunate state of affairs. The quality of olive green cloth was not very good and the colour would soon fade.For first few years of my Army career, I served in a Jat Regiment battalion in Burma during the Second World War and after. The police station, the frontline of police administration and the police beat system, remains ignored. There is a huge difference between the two.The Army, the paramilitary and the police have well defined roles. From two battalions of Crown representative police we now have 200 battalions of CRPF, the largest such force in the world, but there is no let-up in employing the Army for internal security. It only adds flab and delays police functioning.I was surprised to see pictures of Army columns on the roads in Haryana carrying Army placards so that they are not mistaken for the police or the paramilitary.

This reminded me of 1946 when I was posted in Military Operations Directorate at Army Headquarters. The Jat stir in Haryana caused me much anguish. However, within the police there are several faultlines which need to be fixed. This will deter our "Make in India" programme. Investors will hesitate to invest in the fast-growing economy of Haryana. The Haryana government requested Army aid and five Army battalions were deployed." We need to examine the reasons for this pathetic state of affairs. The national capital was held hostage for water. There were even reports of women being raped in the fields. The emphasis is on militarisation of police and use of military trappings which did not woven edge satin ribbon exist earlier. The Army’s presence was a deterrent. Recommendations of the National Police Commission and injunctions of the Supreme Court have been ignored. We used to colour our uniforms to maintain its shade. Army veterans, mostly Jats, cooperated with the Army.The writer, a retired lieutenant-general, was Vice-Chief of Army Staff and has served as governor of Assam and Jammu and Kashmir. The police now has a very top-heavy rank structure. I was flooded with emails. In 1947, and for a decade later, Uttar Pradesh had one IG rank officer commanding the entire police force in the state. Yet the paramilitary on the border are increasingly acting as a border defence force — the BSF on the international border with Pakistan, and Indo-Tibetan Border Police on the border with China, report to the ministry of home affairs. I saw the wisdom of this decision in 1965 during large-scale disturbances in Kolkata when Jyoti Basu was arrested. This was bizarre. Normalcy was soon restored.

The state government requested Army assistance to restore order. There is no doubt these are the main causes for the desperate state of affairs. Today it has 106 officers of the rank of IG and above. I was then commanding the Fort William garrison comprising my battalion and additional troops. There were millions of bales of olive green cloth in our depots, which would have been wasted if we discarded olive green uniforms. Thankfully, this report was found to be incorrect. I have fond memories of my service with Jat troops. A senior rank in the force has to have supporting personnel adding more tail than teeth to a force. We restored order in three days using minimum force. Khaki was our pre-war uniform and looked smarter. The bulk of the Indian Army overseas was serving there. Jats are good soldiers and also good sportsmen. The paramilitary units on the border are required for border policing and not border defence.

The hundred-year gestation seemed to have made no difference to its strength or disposition. Maybe it wasn’t that old. Or perhaps he’d been sold a two-year-old distillation and hadn’t bothered to demand papers to prove its pedigree. It’s obviously not for drinking, but for display, like a Titian or a Picasso — except the wonder at the price is unaccompanied by any wonder at its artistry. However, as we finished our dinner, he produced a bottle of brandy, which he claimed was a hundred years old. I never heard him discussing brands of whisky."These are eight years old," my friend said. (I have tried this product placement before but still haven’t received a single bottle from Sula Promotions, if there is such an institution! How dare you use this newspaper to beg for wine! — Ed. For a billionaire, his house and its décor were very modest."You’ll be glad to get rid of these stale old wines," my friend added. I don’t do any of that but can certainly tell a Claret from a Burgundy or a Rioja and in the white wine universe can detect the difference between a Chardonnay and other grapes.

It tasted like any other. And now I wonder what he paid for it and am in awe at his generosity.We said it was a collector’s item but he insisted that he was honoured by the presence of TV writers and directors and had to splash out to mark the occasion. I am partial to Sauvignon Blanc and the Indian Sula brand is, when in the mother country, my choice. The friend I was with spotted a shelf of dusty bottles eight feet high on the wall behind the sales counter, which had escaped the makeover. They were eight-year-old clarets from famous chateaux. We asked the proprietor what those were.I don’t know about whiskies and brandies that have aged but being a wine-drinker am told that wines which remain in the bottle for more than a few decades are undrinkable. The brandy was uncorked. He climbed on a ladder and clandestinely, below the counter, wiped the dust off the bottles. Very fresh.)A wine shop in my neighbourhood changed hands.We walked out with a half crate of vintage claret for Polyester Satin Ribbons Manufacturers a tenth of what we would have paid in France. Perhaps our host, Mr Deep, had been a bit hasty and overgenerous in serving us the century-old brandy. "They are just now bought.3 crore whisky.I recall parties where guests talked about buying expensive bottle of black, blue or whatever label of Johnnie Walker they exclusively drank. Price is what fools pay. The realisation that there was a beverage called a single malt came later and with it the awareness that each Indian pretentious, snobbish or pretend connoisseur would pronounce that they only touched such-and-such malt. Stopping there soon after their takeover I looked through the shelves and couldn’t see anything I deemed drinkable."What’s a jalebi but sugar friedAnd where the infant who never criedWhere the lover who’s never liedOr the wind-blown willow that never sighed?"From The Diary of Rosemary Marlowe by BachchooMy father, an Armyman, would pour himself a whisky each evening, reserving Sunday afternoons for beer with friends and fellow officers on the lawns of our cantonment bungalows." I was sure at least one or two of them would search for the Vermillion that went beyond the Red, Black and Blue.My grandfather, in his retirement, was a collector of stamps. He looked doubtful but quoted a very derisory price — what we would pay for one his Liebfraumilch rubbish.Acquaintances of mine, fellow wine-quaffers pretend to be experts — the sort that twirl spoonfuls of wine in a wine glass, take sniffs and watch the "tears", the transparent films that stick to the side of the glass, to assess the alcoholic content.This consideration came to mind when I read about the Rs 7. Our nana boasted about their rise in price over the years just as people who trade in Bitcoin do today.Of course, Indian whisky buffs nowadays know what they’re touting and some can probably catalogue the shelves of Edinburgh airport’s duty-free."Must be mistake on label," the proprietor said. I grew up thinking they were all called "Scotch". "I think it’s only sold to British aristocrats. And just as with the Macallan whisky, they sell as collectors’ items."

Bring the others down, we’ll have all six," I said. For me the wonderous issue would be "which idiot paid this price for a bottle of booze?"Some years ago in Birmingham the scion of a capitalist trading company, a Sikh gentleman who was graciously lending us his premises for a TV series, invited us to dinner.  To this day, gentle reader, I protest I feel a pang of guilt when I recall swindling poor Mr Patel who didn’t realise that in the realm of wines old is gold. The new proprietors were an Indian family who brightened up the shop with shiny refrigerators and shelves full of cheap Australian, Chilean and South African wines."We asked him how much he’d charge for them. He had 10 albums full of them with a few pages reserved for three, which the Stanley Gibbons catalogues pronounced as rare and outrageously priced."Ah, but have you ever tried the Johnnie Walker Vermillion Label?" I once asked in such company. But even they may not have heard of Macallan Valerio Adami, a bottle of which sold at an auction last week for £848,750 — that’s about Rs 73,000,000!It was distilled in 1926 and bottled in 1986. Cheers!.It was only on coming to England that I became aware of brands and preferences for them. He bequeathed them to my mamu who may have made a tidy sum from these rarities.

And there is not a sweat shop in sight.The 38-year-old designer has been tapping into this growing global trend by working with some of Vietnam’s 54 ethnic minority groups, each of which have their own unique textiles and traditional clothing designs.Do Quang Thanh, a carpenter, said the idea of making shoes initially struck him as "strange" but he is glad he gave it a try.Her label, Kilomet 109, is at the forefront of Vietnam’s new "ethical fashion" movement — an approach to design that seeks to maximise benefit to communities while minimising environmental harm. but then I realised we need to be concerned about the environmental, ethical side (of fashion) now or it will be too late," said Ms Thao.But bridging this divide isn’t always easy."At first, I just wanted to keep the traditional techniques alive.

The multi-billion dollar sector has helped drive impressive economic growth but also drawn criticism for weak environmental and labour rights regulations."They looked at me like ‘what’ And they said: ‘if you lived here you wouldn’t find a husband’," Ms care label satin ribbon Manufacturers Thao said, explaining that crafting the perfect dark indigo fabric dye is a prerequisite for marriage in their community.She then adds "a more modern, contemporary touch" to style garments that will appeal to clients in fashion capitals like Berlin and New York.The designer has already attracted accolades, winning international design awards and selling her wares to high-fashion buyers.. I want to earn money to raise my children," Ms Kim said."We knew these people had generations of skill, we just had to unlock it so the market could appreciate it as we did," Ms LanVy said.The local women who work with her, such as Luong Thi Kim (40), say they too have benefited from the colloboration."In the past I carved traditional wooden houses now I carve shoes in a modern style — I love the job," he said...Vietnam has in recent decades become a hub for massive garment factories that churn out reams of cheap clothes as quickly as possible for fashion giants like Zara, Mango and H&M.In the remote hills of Cao Bang, some 300 km north of the capital Hanoi, Vietnamese designer Thao Vu is gleefully dropping swaths of hand-spun cotton into a large bucket of fermented indigo leaves.

Over in central Hue — the former imperial capital of Vietnam — another label is also helping local artisans market their skills to the global fashion industry.Long a bastion for cheap, fast-fashion manufacturing, a new crop of designers are trying to transform the Made in Vietnam label and save the country’s rich ethnic heritage in the process. our weaving products can go to other countries.Ms Thao persevered, and now uses traditional roots and leaves to colour organic silk, cotton, and hemp, which are also manufactured from scratch, in a range of hues from deep indigo to pale grey, and earthy oranges and browns.."I learn the techniques from them," Ms Thao said, explaining how she has drawn inspiration from Nung women in Phuc Sec village, who use natural dyes and weave on hand looms.Ms Thao said the Nung women were shocked when she suggested experimenting with colours outside of their traditional dark indigo shade.Fashion4Freedom stepped in to help, teaching traditional woodworkers, who carve ornate pillars in pagodas or local houses, to learn how to make platform shoes that cost some $600 a pair..Fashion4Freedom founder LanVy Nguyen, a former refugee who fled post-war Vietnam in a wooden boat and forged a successful Wall Street career, returned to Vietnam in 1998 and decided to use her venture capital acumen to save ancient artisanal techniques.Yet products made by the country’s traditional fabric spinners are inherently eco friendly — made with natural dyes and textiles, not harsh chemicals or synthetic fibres."Before I weaved for personal use but now .