NEW DELHI, 20 September 2006 — India’s top designers have taken up the challenge to produce clothing to protect soldiers deployed on the world’s highest battlefield in the Himalayas, where cold claims more lives than combat.

The army went to the National Institute of Design (NID), which in turn has focused on a soft target: The angora rabbit.

A team has scoured for farms where the rabbits are bred for their super-soft hair, which the institute says is eight times warmer than sheep wool. The NID has also honed in on defense facilities secretly experimenting with other natural fibers to manufacture thermal clothing.

NID professor Pradyuman Singh Jhala explained that despite its thermal qualities, raw angora is fragile and needs to be toughened to withstand conditions at altitudes of up to 23,000 feet (7,000 meters), where temperatures dip below minus 40 degrees Centigrade (minus 40 Fahrenheit).

“Our challenge is to make this fiber cohesive so that we can weave and spin it into high-altitude clothing,” the scientist said.

“The Institute of Plasma Research is helping us and now we have achieved initial success, and so we approached the government for a plant to treat angora in large quantities,” he said. The plant is due to be operational by year’s end, with an hourly production capacity of three kilograms (6.6 pounds) of strengthened angora, Jhala told AFP from the institute’s headquarters in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad.

The Defense Ministry’s Agriculture Research Laboratory is now breeding angora rabbits to help supply the plant with high-quality wool, government sources said.

But it is unlikely to be enough. “We (India) produce very little angora while China accounts for 80 percent of global production,” Jhala said.

India produces 40 tons of angora a year and may still have to import supplies to cater to the defense forces.

Somesh Singh, who heads the NID apparel unit, toured the Siachen Glacier where Indian and Pakistani forces face off, for a clear idea of where the current uniform fails.

“The deadweight of a full set of special clothing for, say, Siachen can exceed 10 kilograms (22 pounds). And with Angora we will lessen that by 7.5 kilograms,” said one of Singh’s team members who did not want to be named. “With this new fiber technology we will also cut costs,” he said.

The Indian Army deploys around 19,800 soldiers in Kashmir’s Siachen Glacier area, which overlooks Pakistan and China.

Published photographs of Indian troops shivering in tropical kit on the frigid Kashmiri heights of Kargil and Drass during a 1999 skirmish with Pakistan haunts the 1.3-million strong army, which has an annual budget of more than $14 billion.

“How could one rappel up glassy mountain faces and at the same time take off your frozen mitts to fire carbines at the enemy?” asked retired special forces Sgt. Sujag Singh, a Kargil veteran.

The NID experiment has also put the spotlight on the failure of state enterprises to meet the demand for the specialized gear.

Retired Gen. Vishwanath Singh, a former Indian Army chief credited with modernizing the force, lashed out at state-run defense companies. “These public-sector undertakings just cannot keep up with the demand as they are corrupt, top-heavy and bureaucratic,” he said.