The garment sector and the pandemic: Understanding the impact on workers in India

Ernesto Noronha, Premilla D'Cruz and Anurag Shukla

No 266/2026, IPE Working Papers from Berlin School of Economics and Law, Institute for International Political Economy (IPE)

Abstract: The global garment supply chain, which consists of a complex network of manufacturers, suppliers, retailers and workers located across nations was severely impacted by the pandemic. It encountered a demand shock, as cancellations of orders and decreased consumer spending resulted in substantial revenue losses. Given this, we were interested in understanding the effectiveness of the state mediated economy (SME) model where the state's capacity to intervene and support the economy is crucial. We found that the state in case of the garment sector did not infuse funds to support the suppliers in the garment GVC during the COVID-19 pandemic. This had far-reaching effects on employment, wage security, and workers' rights. In fact, the state reinforced the preservation of a low-wage regime through the non-enforcement of its own advisories. The sudden loss of jobs and income, along with severe restrictions on mobility due to the lockdown, plunged workers into an unprecedented crisis.

Keywords: State mediated economy; global value chains; garments; India; COVID-19; workers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/340185/1/1969444487.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:ipewps:340185

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IPE Working Papers from Berlin School of Economics and Law, Institute for International Political Economy (IPE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().