Murthy, a 35-year-old tailor, watches eagerly as construction workers put the finishing touches to a big apparel park that opens for business at the end of the year. The 200-acre (80-hectare) park costing nearly 2.5 billion rupees ($55 million), is expected to provide employment for about 15,000 people as the southern Indian textile town of Tirupur prepares excitedly for the end of global textile quotas.
The rules that have curbed exports of textiles and clothing from poor countries to the rich world for more than 40 years end on December 31. Many developing states will lose out when free competition replaces quotas, but India is not one of them.
And that could be the opportunity of a lifetime for tailors like Murthy, who struggle to find employment for more than six months in the year.
"I have heard some kind of quotas will go and our country will be flooded with orders," he said, as he pedalled away at his rusty sewing machine.
"I will hopefully get assured employment and won't have to travel from town to town in search of a job. I can also think of sending my daughter to school," Murthy said as his wife sat by, stitching buttons on a dress.
The prospect of an end to quotas has sparked a sense of urgency in Tirupur, a dusty town 550 km (340 miles) from Madras that is known as the Manchester of south India.
There are nearly 1,000 textile exporters in Tirupur, and their knitwear sales to 35 countries bring in $1 billion a year, and they are all hurriedly expanding.
Glass and chrome buildings are springing up, banks are opening offices and new hotels are starting up. The town was built in the 1970s and its population of 500,000 is now looking forward to having a modern water supply and sewerage system.
Machinery whirs in workshops as big as football fields while hundreds of workers, including women in colourful sarees, churn out lingerie, T-shirts, golf shirts and underwear for big-name brands such as Polo Ralph Lauren, Sara Lee and Wrangler.
US retail chains such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Target Corp are also heading to Tirupur with their shopping lists.
"Everybody is expanding capacity here. In the past year about 7.50 billion rupees has been invested in plant and machinery," said A. Sakthivel, the chairman of a group called Poppy's that has annual sales of $25 million and 4,000 employees.
China and India are expected to be the big winners from the demise of quotas. A study by the World Trade Organisation predicts that China could triple its share of the US market for imported clothes to 50 percent, while India could quadruple its share from 2002 levels to 15 percent.
"The world cannot buy everything from China. India will always remain the second source and nobody can beat us on quality," said Sakthivel, whose workshops are lined with giant gleaming dyeing and drying machines from Taiwan and Turkey.
Nearby, two English literature graduates who started with a paltry 10,000 rupees seven years ago now rule over a business worth 70 million rupees and a roster of 53 international corporate clients for the rugby shirts it makes.
"We have been waiting for the end of the quotas for so many years. It is a dream come true. We're ready to face the challenge," said one of the entrepreneurs, George Frank.
The textile and clothing sector is India's largest employer after agriculture and accounts for nearly four percent of the country's gross domestic product.
India has the advantage of being a big cotton producer, but its garment trade is hobbled by archaic labour laws, low productivity and high financing costs. In contrast to China's mass producers, the industry in India is fragmented and dominated by small and medium-sized firms.
Still, the government expects the abolition of quotas to boost employment in the sector and has set its sight on increasing exports to $50 billion by 2010 from $11 billion now.
"Imagine the trickle down of an expanding textile sector," said T.K. Bhaumik, a trade expert in New Delhi with the Confederation of Indian Industry, an influential lobby group.
"Small towns and villages will prosper, investments will grow, infrastructure will improve and it will all add to growth."
For old-timers such as Tirumalai, a 50-year-old textile worker, the breath-taking pace of development in Tirupur is not without its costs.
"The traffic situation is getting worse. The city is becoming costlier and pollution is increasing," he said. "But we will have to endure this because it means our children will get jobs as more foreign companies come to place their orders here."