No info available on weavers shifting to other income sources in lockdown: Govt to Parliament

NEW DELHI: The government informed Parliament on Thursday that no information is available on weavers being forced to shift to other alternative sources of income during the lockdown.

“Textile sector is largely an unorganized sector hence, no such information is available,” textiles minister Smriti Zubin Irani told Rajya Sabha in a written reply.

She was replying to a question on whether during lockdown, weavers had to face immense hardships because of no supply of raw materials forcing a large number of weavers to shift to other alternative sources of income like daily labour.


“The role of the government is to create a conducive environment and provide enabling conditions for textile manufacturing in the country and help in boosting the textile sector,” Irani said.

The minister said the global pandemic of Covid-19 has affected the textile sector due to restriction of social gathering, migration of laborers as well as affecting all the stakeholders from farmers to traders/exporters in the value chain.

The government has conducted a study “Impact of Covid-19 pandemic on Indian silk industry? to ascertain the crisis caused to the sector.

“It has been observed that there was a production decline and monetary loss at every stage of the value chain,” she said.

In a separate reply, Irani said around 18.67 lakh farmers benefited through the cotton procurement by government worth Rs 26,432 crore in 2020-21 till February 3.

In 2019-20, 21.5 lakh farmers had benefited from the government’s cotton procurement of Rs 28,500 crore.