At this point when TIP is facing extreme crisis Dr Zubair Bandukda has stepped in again and joined TIP. Yet nobody knows, what his plans are but it seems like he is already in action. He’s been meeting every single student individually, to discuss and ask their opinions on how to make things better at TIP and also had a meeting with the alumni at city campus today.

A recent report by ‘The Express Tribune’ has all in it explaining the current situation. Textile Institute Brings Back Former President

There was no harm in trying though. And thus spurred a quest to figure out what could be done to make it possible. I don’t know how I concluded this but it somehow occurred to me that I had to get more people involved in order to increase my chances. And so started looking around for people who would be interested. What followed was something akin to Charles Xavier recruitment effort. Some said they were interested but didn’t want to make an effort while others basically told me to… well you know what. Nevertheless, there were eventually 5 recruits with a mix of Management and Science students ranging from sophomores to seniors. I don’t want to make this complicated with names so for now I’m just going to call them “the 5” with a lowercase “t”.

Now that we had the 5, there was also somewhat of a plan. One that was spontaneously concocted during the search for the 5. The plan was to apply for the bursary and hope for the best! And so we set out on our mission to write our statements of motivation and revise and re-revise them until the very bones in our hands gave in, until the keys on the keyboard cracked and until the electricity went out. Wait a minute, maybe it was the other way round. Regardless, we wrote until we were sure we couldn’t possibly sound more convincing and sent out our electronic applications. Some time later, each of the 5 received received the following notice from the TI.

Dear Mr XXXXX,

I am very pleased to inform you that your application for support to attend the 85th TI World Conference in Sri Lanka on 1 – 3 March 2007 has been successful. The Benevolent Society will pay the student delegate registration fee of 300 US dollars on your behalf and will also pay the fee of GB 30 pounds for one year’s student membership of The Textile Institute.

Now what?

Ok, so we had something. 5 students from TIP had around 350 US dollars each. In order to get to Sri Lanka we somehow needed to double this amount. The ball was set in motion and here’s part of what I wrote to the President.

Dear Sir,
I am pleased to inform you that 5 of our students who applied for the TI bursary have been successful in qualifying for the award and their conference fee which is 300 US Dollars (approx Rs.18000) for students will be paid by the Textile Institute Benevolent Society.

The 5 were:

1. Muzammil Ahmed (TS4) – The overenthusiastic optimist
2. Aasim Ahmed (TS4) – The optimistic pragmatist
3. Muhammad Ali Hakeem (TS3) – The technology and entertainment specialist
4. Zaid Zafar (TMM2) – The one that actually did the work
5. Furhan Hussain (TMM2) – The pessimistic pragmatist

It was a well balanced team. Not something that was planned but just turned out the way it did. I think it was just that each of us adapted to serve the roles that we needed to in time.

Together, we contacted the industry, faced countless rejections and more often than not were simply ignored. But we were persistant and eventually found ourselves face to face with some of the “Saiths” (owners). After much hard work and many convincing arguments on how 5 students would bring back knowledge to inspire countless others, we got sponsorship from Al-Karam Textiles, some more from Afroze Textiles and the remainder was generously plugged by TIP. And just like that were were all set to attend our very first, 85th Textile Institute World Conference.

By the way has anyone noticed that the exchange rate for a US dollar was around 60 rupees back then. Anyhow.

The conference was an eye opener. We found ourselves amongst some of the most influential minds from the field of textiles and what was more astonishing to us was the realization that they were ordinary people just like us. We had lunch sharing a table with Professor John Hearle, did the bhangra during fireworks at the official banquet dinner on an exquisite Colombo beach, saw some amazing and some not so amazing presentations by researchers across the globe and through the course of the conference realized that there was so much more to textiles and research that we were completely oblivious to.

Our experience didn’t end there. We trekked the streets and beaches of Colombo. Enjoyed some of the most amazing foods I’ve ever tasted in my life. Experienced what it feels like to step on a zebra crossing when the traffic actually stops. Fit 5 in a Sri Lankan Tuk Tuk (rikshaw). O and Ali Hakeem lost his Camera in excitement to purchase chocolates from the duty free. The chocolate helped so in short we still had some of the most amazing time of our lives!

The take home to me was simple. There was so much more we could do. The possibilities were endless.

Out of the 5, three went on to receive the prestigious Eqbal Ahmad Award which is presented to just one student from each graduating class at TIP.

Muzammil Ahmed went on to pursue an MBA and has set himself on track for a lucrative career in supply chain management.

Ali Hakeem bought a new video camera and went on to make some of the coolest student videos in TIP history. He is presently working as an auditor for the textile industry.

Zaid Zafar went on pursue a career at one of the most prestigious denim manufacturing groups in Pakistan.

Furhan graduated from TIP and is currently pursuing an MBA while working in research projects at Textile Research and Innovation Centre. Since then he has presented papers at various conferences in Pakistan.

As for me, I graduated from TIP and later that year became the first research assistant to join the Textile Research and Innovation Centre. In November 2008 I led another team of TIP students, this time to publish two papers at the 86th TIWC in Hong Kong. But that’s a story for another day.

Enhance productivity & quality through testing

Cotton is traded world over in different denominations like most popular being US $ /lb but this differs market to market when we go more specific to country wise like in Pakistan it is traded in Rs. /Maund(37.324kgs) or in China Rmb/ton or in India Rs. /candy(227kgs)(356kgs). So in order to understand and compare various prices all over the world we should be able to comprehend these into one single unit to better understand and analyse the available data.

The five major cotton exporting countries in 2009 were (1) the United States, (2) India, (3) Uzbekistan, (4) Brazil, and (5) Pakistan. So if we look at the cotton exports of US and India, that figure makes almost 50% of the total cotton exported worldwide so you can well imagine how the global trade is influenced by these two cotton producing nations. Lets first look at the US, the total domestic mill usage is almost 3.5 million bales against a crop size ranging from as high as 21.6 million (2006-07) and 12.2 million (2008-09). Each bale is of 480 lbs). So anything above 4 million bales, it needs to be exported. So that’s why the cotton trade world over is greatly influenced by the price of cotton futures traded on NY Board of trade (NYBOT). A specific standard for quality of cotton fibre with respect to its length and color is defined as a base, Premiums and Discounts for deviation from this base grade is offered by merchants world over. For example, Pakistani cotton is usually traded on a discounted price because of the higher trash contents whereas Indian cotton is traded on a premium because of its better quality like higher staple length and lower trash content. On NYBOT, Cotton is traded in form of contracts of each contract of 50,000lbs for contract months of March, May, July, October, December.

I now leave the subject open to you for more self exploration from following useful links and i jump on to share some updated market reports for you to have a taste on what kind of market reports i was referring to,

http://www.cottoninc.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton

http://www.brecorder.com/news/cotton-and-textiles/

http://www.thefabricofourlives.com/

http://www.cottonaustralia.com.au/facts/factsandfigures.aspx?id=7

http://www.marketswiki.com/mwiki/ICE_Cotton_No._2