NEW DELHI: Khadi fabric production has increased by 62 percent in the last five years,according to the Khadi & Village Industries Commission (KVIC).This increase over theperiod of 2015 to 2019 is being credited to the registration of new khadi institutions with KVIC and its multiple artisan-centric programmes.
The organisation distributed 32,000 new model charkhas and 5,600 modern looms since 2015. It also added 376 new institutions and assimilated over 40,000 new artisans to boost the overall production.
In the fiscal year 2014-15, the production of Khadi was 105.38 million square meters – which was a share of 4.23 percent of the overall textiles production. But in 2018-19, production grew to 170.80 million square meters – which was 8.49 percent share of the overall fabric production in the country.
Meanwhile, in the same period, mill fabric production fell by 19.06 percent. KVIC Chairman Vinai Kumar Saxena says the steep rise was due to the new policies of the MSME ministry that increased the numbers of artisans in the khadi sector. “We started registering new institutions to widen employment as well as to revive defunct institutions. It is encouraging that rise in share of Khadi production in Textiles sector in last five years has grown more than 200 percent,” he added.