According to sources when top government officials salute the national flag anywhere in the world, women in a village at the other end of the country from New Delhi swell with pride. Meanwhile this is because Tulasigeri is home to India's only official flag-making company and because the local men have proved themselves not up to the job. Accordingly Annapurna Koti, a supervisor at the Karnataka Cotton Village Enterprise (KKGSS) said "The men were not as patient as the women and got the measurements wrong”.
Annapurna Koti said "They had to unstitch the cloth and re-do the time consuming process and they left after the fourth day and never returned." Moreover around 400 people work for the state owned company in the southern state of Karnataka, 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) from the capital, most of them women. Meanwhile the female employees perform all the intricate parts of the process such as spinning the cotton and weaving the thread into cloth on foot-powered looms. Moreover last year, they produced around 60,000 tricolors.
Nirmala S Ilakal, who has worked in the printing department for 15 years,
told “The guidelines in the national flag code of India and from the Bureau of
Indian Standards are strict, covering everything from the exact shades to the
stitching size and usually the piece is rejected if there is even the slightest
error”.
