Union Minister Giriraj Singh claims that The Ministry of Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises (MSME) is planning to provide employment to 5 crore people in upcoming 5 years through Khadi industry.

“We have made a plan to introduce solar-run spinning wheels in KVIC (Khadi and Village Industries Commission) so that it can provide employment to over five crore people throughout the nation in the next five years,” Singh told PTI here yesterday.

“Presently Khadi is less than one per cent of textiles, but due to concerted efforts in the last two years, the Khadi industry sales have gone up from Rs 35,000 crore in 2014 to about Rs 52,000 crore,” said the Union Minister on the event ‘Khadi By Raymond’. “Various schemes, including interest subsidies, financial assistance under the market promotion and development scheme, cluster-based development opportunities, as well as design-oriented public private partnerships, are being promoted by the ministry,” he said.

“The new scheme of ‘zero defect, zero effect’, launched by the prime minister, will help increase the quality to match the global standards,” he said.  The KVIC has collaborated with private industries like Arvind, Raymond and many other fabrics.

Khadi Needs To Be Popularized First

The main target of the commission is to make Khadi popular in the youth and other corporate. Since, it is what we used to use, it should be brought back as the concern of ‘Make In India’ movement. Singh said that various fashion designers are also getting involved for using and launching the Khadi products. KVIC believes that Khadi needs to be subjected as a fashionable fabric and is planning to open premium lounges in major cities. The 7000 showrooms of KVIC can be used for selling Khadi products, says Singh. Just like promoting Make In India scheme, Singh is looking to digitize the systems to reduce the paper work.