You have two options.
Option 1:
A farmer grows Jayadhaara cotton variety with other vegetables & pulses, which takes care of clothing & nutrition for all of us. The cotton is harvested by employing local women and sold as per MSP.
After ginning, the medium staple length cotton, ideal for manual spinning, get sent to a slivering plant, & the roving cotton thus produced is handed over to the Khadi sangha.
The yarn spun by rural women on ambara charaka gets washed, starched, warped, wound, & hand-woven by various craftspeople in the village. The Khadi textile produced with minimum energy & the least amount of carbon footprint is dyed, screen-printed, & tailored by multiple people. After compensating the entire value chain, the cotton khadi flag is offered with a frugal margin at Khadi Bhandars across the country.
By now, you would have lost count of the number of people employed & their human hours toiled behind every flag.
Option 2:
Polyester is made from plastic, a petroleum by-product, from a non-renewable resource. When the polyester is linked to oil, the ownership comes under the power of a few companies. The chains of labour, natural resource, and chemicals involved in the making of polyester are almost invisible in the final product. Due to excessive water and energy consumption, polyester has a significant negative environmental impact during production, use, & disposal.
As per the newly amended law under the national flag code, our flag can now be made in polyester & can be imported too. This machine-made material & factory-assembled flag is sold cheap.
If you want to display your patriotic self by hoisting the national flag on your rooftop, remember - the choice is not between the tri-colour 'material' cotton or polyester but with mass-produced & produced-by-the-mass.
On this independence day, have the freedom to
hoist a flag that respects our farmers
hoist a flag that encourages rural craftspeople
hoist a flag that enables women's empowerment
hoist a flag that our freedom fighters would be proud of
hoist a flag that constitutes a non-violent economy
hoist a flag that represents the well-being of our country
The choice is yours.
