Water-saving, recycling, and disposal practices in the hand block printing units in India

 The study covers thirty hand block printing centres across five states– sixteen in Rajasthan, six in Madhya Pradesh, four in Gujarat, and two each in Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Data from the Central Ground Water Board, Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, Government of India, shows that all surveyed locations in Rajasthan and Gujarat fall in the "Dark Zone" denoting serious water crisis, with water levels below 40 metres in most districts. The report notes that Rajasthan and Gujarat together account for more than 60 per cent of India's total hand block print and screen print production. In Kaladera, north of Jaipur, the water table has fallen from 60 feet in 1980 to 600 feet at present. 

Sanganer, in Rajathan's Jaipur district, contributes 15 per cent of India's Rs. 690 crore national export market for hand block prints, a figure the report draws from a 2012 industry report by Fibre2Fashion. Despite this scale, the town's Common Effluent Treatment Plant (CETP) has remained non-functional since its installation in 2019, causing untreated effluent from around 3,300 screen printing units, employing roughly 55,000 workers to drain into the Amanishah Nala, which eventually connects to the Chambal, Yamuna and Ganga river systems. This has allowed toxic, lead-laden and carcinogenic chemical dyes to pollute the town's land, groundwater and air, with contaminated water being pumped into agricultural fields located 2–5 kilometres away, affecting sites that are home to over 250 migratory and resident bird species. Many screen printing units operate on unregularized land without safety gear or environmental clearance, discharging waste directly into drains and open fields.

A 2008 study assessed the situation of textile dyeing and printing units in Pali, Jodhpur and Balotra and found that textile effluents contained roughly 20 per cent dye content which was responsible for degradation of water quality in this water-scarce, semi-arid region of the country. The same assessment recorded 68 contaminated wells in villages of Pali, 1,700 in Balotra and around 25 in Jodhpur, with residents reporting allergies, cases of skin cancer, eye irritation, osteoporosis and gastric ailments after using the contaminated water. 

The report states that synthetic dyes such as Naphthol, though banned in the international market, remain in use at many of the surveyed centres. Some printers claim their products are Azo-free (lead-free) but there is no quality check on dye usage across the thousands of small block-printing and screen-printing units, nor any certification attached to finished products. This has driven the rise of screen printing, whose effluent discharge volume is stated to be a hundred fold greater than that of hand block printing units, due to mass production and their rapid growth has outpaced the capacity of existing effluent treatment plants.

The study shows that Common Effluent Treatment Plants (CETPs) in Balotra, Pali, Ajrakhpur and Bagru have insufficient capacity and inconsistent monitoring by the Pollution Control Board. Though global interest in sustainable and natural dye textiles offer promise, government support remains limited on the ground.

The report states that hand block printing was historically a household cottage industry in which women held an equal role in managing the work alongside men but this has been reduced to limited pre-printing and post-printing tasks such as finishing, quality checking and packaging, driven by the inflow of male migrant labour and the physical separation of workshop and living spaces, due to which women do not participate outside their home. This trend needs to change for the better, the report notes, with women's contribution to the craft deserving greater recognition and visibility going forward.

Focus and Factoids by Anurima Biswas.