Over 10 crore people are engaged in the textile and allied sector. “Textile sector in India provides largest source of employment in the country with over 4.5 crore people employed directly and another 6 crore people in allied sector including large number of women and rural population through various schemes and public programmes,” Union Minister of Textiles Smriti Zubin Irani in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.

She said that the amended Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme is being implemented to upgrade technology and machinery of the textile industry with an outlay of Rs 17,822 crore during 2016-2022 which will attract investment of Rs 1 lakh crore and generate employment in the textile sector by 2022.

Under the Scheme of Integrated Textile Park (SITP), the government provides a 40 per cent subsidy with a ceiling of Rs 40 crore to set up Textile Parks for infrastructure creation and employment generation. 59 sanctioned textiles parks are under various stages of implementation, once fully operational it is expected to house about 5,909 textile units and will generate employment for about 3,61,093 persons.

The Union Minister said that under the scheme for development of Knitting and Knitwear to boost production in knitting and knitwear clusters which provide employment to nearly 24 lakh persons. Apart from these programmes, the government is implementing various schemes for promoting investment, production, employment generation in power loom sector, Silk Samagra, North Eastern Region Textile Promotion Scheme (NERTPS), National Handicraft Development Programme (NHDP) and National Handloom Development Programme (NHDP) to provide direct job in rural India.

There is no specific scheme for branding of raw cotton. However, the Government has launched Indian Handloom brand for high quality handloom products, with authentic traditional design with zero defects and zero effect on the environment. Since its launch, 1590 registration have been issued under 184 product categories. 

She further informed that by undertaking industry oriented entry level skilling programmes in the organized sector, a total of 76 industries have been empanelled under entry level skilling and allocated a training target of 1.36 lakh beneficiaries. For up-skilling programmes 44 industries have been empanelled and allocated training targets of 30,000 beneficiaries.

Under Technical Textiles interventions, it is poised to create high value jobs in the country for textiles sector workers. Employment in the sector is expected to increase to 23 lakh by 2024 from the present 16 lakhs. Interventions will help to achieve US $40 billion market size by 2024-25 from present level of $ 19 billion and also to enhance target penetration level in domestic applications: agro-textiles (10 pc - 40 pc), medical textiles (10 pc – 30 pc), geo-textiles (20 pc – 60 pc), protection textiles (20 pc- 60 pc). Besides these, the government is also providing training under the Handloom and Handicraft sector for upgradation of skills through training to the workers and artisans in weaving, designing, dye and printing to produce good quality products.