he status of women in India has been subject to many great changes over the past few millennia.

[4][5] From equal status with men in ancient times[6] through the low points of the medieval period,[7] to the promotion of equal rights by many reformers, the history of women in India has been eventful. In modern India, women have held high offices in India including that of the President, Prime Minister, Speaker of the Lok Sabha and Leader of the Opposition. As of 2011, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha (Lower House of the parliament) were women. However, women in India continue to face atrocities such as rape, acid throwing, dowry killings while young girls are forced into prostitution; as of late rape has seen a sharp increase following several high profile cases of young girls brutally raped in public areas.[8][9][10] According to a global poll conducted by Thomson Reuters, India is the "fourth most dangerous country" in the world for women,[11][12] and the worst country for women among the G20 countries.[13]

Ancient India
Scholars believe that in ancient India, women enjoyed equal status with men in all aspects of life.[14] However, some have contrary views.[15] Works by ancient Indian grammarians such as Patanjali and Katyayana suggest that women were educated in the early Vedic period.[16][17] Rigvedic verses suggest that women married at a mature age and were probably free to select their own husbands.[18] Scriptures such as the Rig Veda and Upanishads mention several women sages and seers, notably Gargi and Maitreyi.[19] There are very few texts specifically dealing with the role of women[20] an important exception is the Stri Dharma Paddhati of Tryambakayajvan, an official at Thanjavur c. 1730. The text compiles strictures on women's behaviour dating back to the Apastamba sutra (c. 4th century BCE).[21] The opening verse goes:
mukhyo dharmaH smr^tiShu vihito bhartr^shushruShANam hi : women are enjoined to be of service to their husbands.

Some kingdoms in ancient India had traditions such as nagarvadhu ("bride of the city"). Women competed to win the coveted title of nagarvadhu. Amrapali is the most famous example of a nagarvadhu. According to studies, women enjoyed equal status and rights during the early Vedic period.[22] However in approximately 500 B.C., the status of women began to decline with the Smritis (esp. Manusmriti), and with the Islamic invasion of Babur and the Mughal empire and Christianity later curtailing women's freedom and rights.[7] Although reform movements such as Jainism allowed women to be admitted to religious orders, by and large women in India faced confinement and restrictions.[22] The practice of child marriages is believed to have started around the sixth century.[23]

Independent India
Women in India now participate fully in areas such as education, sports, politics, media, art and culture, service sectors, science and technology, etc.[7] Indira Gandhi, who served as Prime Minister of India for an aggregate period of fifteen years, is the world's longest serving woman Prime Minister.[30] The Constitution of India guarantees to all Indian women equality (Article 14), no discrimination by the State (Article 15(1)), equality of opportunity (Article 16), and equal pay for equal work (Article 39(d)). In addition, it allows special provisions to be made by the State in favour of women and children (Article 15(3)), renounces practices derogatory to the dignity of women (Article 51(A) (e)), and also allows for provisions to be made by the State for securing just and humane conditions of work and for maternity relief. (Article 42).[31] Feminist activism in India gained momentum in the late 1970s. One of the first national-level issues that brought women's groups together was the Mathura rape case. The acquittal of policemen accused of raping a young girl Mathura in a police station led to country-wide protests in 1979-1980. The protests, widely covered by the national media, forced the Government to amend the Evidence Act, the Criminal Procedure Code, and the Indian Penal Code; and created a new offence, custodial rape.[31] Female activists also united over issues such as female infanticide, gender bias, women's health, and women's literacy. Since alcoholism is often associated with violence against women in India,[32] many women groups launched anti-liquor campaigns in Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and other states.[31] Many Indian Muslim women have questioned the fundamental leaders' interpretation of women's rights under the Shariat law and have criticized the triple talaq system.[22] In 1990s, grants from foreign donor agencies enabled the formation of new women-oriented NGOs. Self-help groups and NGOs such as Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) have played a major role in the advancement of women's rights in India. Many women have emerged as leaders of local movements; for example, Medha Patkar of the Narmada Bachao Andolan. The Government of India declared 2001 as the Year of Women's Empowerment (Swashakti).[22] The National Policy For The Empowerment Of Women came was passed in 2001.[33] In 2006, the case of Imrana, a Muslim rape victim, was highlighted by the media. Imrana was raped by her father-in-law. The pronouncement of some Muslim clerics that Imrana should marry her father-in-law led to widespread protests, and finally Imrana's father-in-law was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The verdict was welcomed by many women's groups and the All India Muslim Personal Law Board.[34] In 2010 March 9, one day after International Women's day, Rajya Sabha passed the Women's Reservation Bill requiring that 33% of seats in India's Parliament and state legislative bodies be reserved for women.[35]

1 Introduction
The textile and clothing (T&C) industries form a major part of manufacturing production, employment and trade in many developing countries. This paper will examine the importance of the T&C industry in growth and development strategies in developing countries. We will review economic and social aspects and describe the importance of textiles and clothing in incomes, employment and growth and development strategies of developing countries. The T&C industry is one of the oldest, largest and most global industries in the world. It is the typical starter industry for countries engaged in export-orientated industrialisation (Gereffi 2002) and is labour-intensive. T&C offers a range of opportunities including entry-level jobs for unskilled labour in developing countries. The technological features of the T&C industry have made it suitable as the first step on the industrialisation ladder in poor countries some of which have experienced a very high output growth rate in the sector, such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Mauritius, and have since become middle income countries (Vietnam, Mauritius). Brenton et al. (2007) suggest a number of reasons why the clothing sector has played such an important role in economic development. The sector absorbs large numbers of unskilled labour, typically drawing them from rural agricultural households to rural locations. Despite relatively low start-up investment costs, expansion of the sector provides a base upon which to build capital for more technologically demanding activities in other sectors. Growth of the sector allows imports of more advanced technologies to be financed through revenues gained from garment exports. However the characteristics of the industry (relatively low capital intensity; low investment costs; and use of low skilled labour), also mean that the industry is relatively footloose and able to adjust to changing market conditions quickly (Nordas 2004). Trade policy regulations has had a major impact on the pattern of textile and clothing production and are likely to do so in the near future. China has become a very important player now that restrictions on its trade are progressively being lifted. This has intensified competition for traditional textile and clothing producers especially small and remote countries. The structure of this paper is as follows. Section 2 reviews the economic aspects of the textile and clothing industry, from a macro perspective, both static and dynamic. Section 3 reviews social aspects. Section 4 discusses the role of trade and other economic policies in using textiles and clothing industries for growth and development. Section 5 presents some brief case studies on the role of textiles and clothing in growth and development strategies in four countries. Section 6 concludes.
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It suggests that textiles and clothing industries are important in economic and social terms, in the short-run by providing incomes, jobs, especially for women, and foreign currency receipts and in the long-run by providing countries the opportunity for sustained economic development in those

countries with appropriate policies and institutions to enhance the dynamic effects of textiles and clothing. The potential of the textile and clothing industries to contribute to long-run growth and development will depend not only on the attributes (desirable or otherwise) of the investors, but also on the quality and effectiveness of government policies and institutions in developing countries to build on this investment. Economic aspects The T&C industries are very important for a handful of countries, in terms of trade, GDP and employment and have contributed significantly in several other countries. The T&C industries provide opportunities for export diversification and expansion of manufactured exports for lowincome countries that can exploit their labour cost advantages and fill emerging niches and meet buyer demands. There are also dynamic effects of T&C industries and these dynamic effects are greater, the more linkages have been built up between the garment industry and local textile suppliers. At the macro level there are a number of ways in which the T&C industries affect economic development. T&C industries are a major contributor to incomes for selected countries. The contribution of T&C production to GDP differs by country but is up to 5% in Sri Lanka, 12% in Cambodia and 15% in Pakistan; T&C are the dominant source of exports and foreign exchange in several countries. Low income and developing countries such as Cambodia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka depend on T&C exports for more than 50% of total manufacturing exports (e.g. 80% in Cambodia, 83.5% in Bangladesh); The employment effects are also significant. Employment in T&C production for least developed and low income countries as a share of total employment in manufacturing ranges from 35% in selected low income countries, 75% in Bangladesh and 90% in other selected LDCs (e.g. Lesotho, Cambodia). ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

Even in the decade before the term womens lib was a common phrase, the number of married women entering the workforce increased dramatically thanks largely to washers, dryers and freezers, according to research from the University of Notre Dame.

But liberating women from housework and propelling them into the workforce may not be the whole story, according to Steven Lugauer, a Notre Dame economist whose research was published recently in Labour Economics. Between 1960 and 1970, womens labor force participation rates and households ownership of appliances both increased significantly with the percentage of working married women increasing from 33 percent to 43 percent, and households owning washers, dryers and freezers increasing from 11 percent to 28 percent. (The number of single women working did not change appreciably from 1960 to 1970).

Using U.S. census data from 1960 and 1970, Lugauer and colleagues explored the relationship between married womens appliance ownership and their likelihood of entering the workforce. Accepted wisdom had been that appliances in the house actually cause women to work more inside the home rather than liberating them to work outside the home, Lugauer says, referring to a book titled More Work for Mother based on a famous economic study conducted in the 1980s on household appliances. Lugauers study has shown that not to be the case, and he uses the analogy of advances in the transportation industry over the last century to illustrate his point. Air travel has become easier, car travel has become easier. We dont spend less time traveling, we just travel to more places that are farther away, he says. The same could be said for appliances and their effect on a household: Women wouldnt necessarily spend less time on household chores because of appliances, but appliance ownership likely results in better results: a family having cleaner clothes or meals made more efficiently. Its not clear that women spend less time in the home just because the technology has gotten better, Lugauer says.
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In our kitchens, lounge rooms and laundries there's an array of gadgets that have helped transform the economy. But which has had the biggest impact? Many would probably choose the internet, the technology that defines our age. After all, it has rapidly altered the way we work, shop and socialise, while spawning industries unimagined even a few years ago. But some economists think a more potent change agent is sitting, under-appreciated, in the laundry. The Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang argues the washing machine beats the internet hands down when it comes to economic impact. In his book, 23 Things They Don't Tell You about Capitalism, Chang says the washing machine, and related gadgets such as the electric iron, have ''totally transformed the way women, and consequently men, live''. He cites US data from the 1940s showing how the newly invented machine reduced the time needed to clean a standard load of laundry from four hours to 41 minutes. That's a factor of six. The electric iron reduced the time taken to iron that laundry load from 4.5 hours to 1.75 hours - a factor of more than 2.5.
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These devices allowed women to move out of their homes and get involved in more productive activities than washing clothes, especially paid work. The arrival of the washing machine and

electric iron as mass consumer products in the 1950s contributed to a surge in female workforce participation. This virtually doubled the workforce in advanced countries, revolutionising their economies in the process. Of course the mass use of washing machines and irons was only possible because of innovations such as piped water and electricity. Others, such as the contraceptive pill, also underpinned the dramatic increase in female labour market participation. But without the time savings made possible by washing machines, the magnitude of economic change would not have been nearly so dramatic. While Chang acknowledges revolutionary aspects of the internet, he claims its economic influence is often exaggerated. Even the advent of the telegraph in 1866 had a bigger impact on global communications than the internet, he says. A letter sent across the Atlantic Ocean in the 1860s took two weeks by boat but the telegraph slashed the transmission of a 300-word transatlantic message to seven or eight minutes - a factor of more than 2500 times. Chang estimates an email message is only about 100 times faster than its predecessor, the fax. It's likely we exaggerate the revolutionary nature of cyberspace simply because it's new. The same was probably true when cars, planes and electric light bulbs made their appearance. People tend to attribute disproportionate importance to new gadgets and downplay the importance of things we've grown used to, such as washing machines. ''We vastly overestimate the impacts of the internet only because it is affecting us now,'' Chang writes. There's a fascinating twist in the economics of the washing machine: billions are yet to have their clothes washed in one. While they are commonplace in Australian laundries, most of the world's population still can't afford to buy one. A Swedish public health statistician, Hans Rosling, analysed industry data and concluded an average disposable income of $US40 a day is needed to afford a washing machine. For hundreds of millions in slums and villages in developing countries one would be useless, even if they could afford it, since they don't have the electricity and piped water needed to run one. In India, for example, an estimated 400 million to 500 million people don't yet have electricity in their homes. Rosling estimates only about 2 billion of the world's 7 billion people have a washing machine. But that proportion is set to increase rapidly. Strong growth in developing countries such as China, India and Brazil has lifted millions out of poverty and a washing machine is near the top of every family's shopping list. For them, the economic changes made possible by the washing machine are still to come.
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Trends in food packaging

Main article: Active packaging

Numerous reports industry associations agree that use of smart indicators will increase. There are a number of different indicators with different benefits for food producers, consumers and retailers.[4]

Temperature recorders
Temperature recorders are used to monitor products shipped in a cold chain and to help validate the cold chain. Digital temperature data loggers measure and record the temperature history of food shipments. They sometimes have temperatures displayed on the indicator or have other output (lights, etc.): The data from a shipment can be downloaded (cable, RFID, etc.) to a computer for further analysis. These help identify if there has been temperature abuse of products and can help determine the remaining shelf life.[5] They can also help determine the time of temperature extremes during shipment so corrective measures can be taken.

Time temperature indicators

Time temperature indicators integrate the time and temperature experienced by the indicator and adjacent foods. Some use chemical reactions that result in a color change while others use the migration of a dye through a filter media. To the degree that these physical changes in the indicator match the degradation rate of the food, the indicator can help indicate probable food degradation.[6]

RFID
Radio Frequency Identification is applied to food packages for supply chain control and has shown a significant benefit in allowing food producers and retailers create full real time visibility of their supply chain.

Biodegradable packaging
Plastic packaging being used is usually non-biodegradable due to possible interactions with the food. Also, biodegradable polymers often require special composting conditions to properly degrade. Normal sealed landfill conditions do not promote biodegradation. Biodegradable plastics includes biodegradable films and coatings synthesized from organic materials and microbial polymers.

Edible packagig
Some package materials are edible. For example, pharmaceuticals are sometimes in capsules made of gelatin, starch or other materials. Newer films and products are being developed.[7]