A ray of hope had come for the Indian textile sector following Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked a delegation from the textile industry to send a brief note on the key issues to be addressed. Modi had called for a meeting with 11 textiles industry delegates from across the country recently to get to know the issues the textile industry is going through.
Thanking Modi, the TEA president said he was glad to note that this was the first time a Prime Minister was interacting with only the textile industry representatives to know the ground realities of the industry, and it was a really rare occasion. Raja Shanmugham, president of Tiruppur Exporters’ Association, who was also part of the team, said the meeting is an indication of the Prime Minister’s eagerness to help the industry. He wanted to elicit information from the industry at the field level. said.
Speaking exclusively to Textile Value Chain, Raja Shanmugham recalled this meeting as a one with the highest importance. “I had represented Tirupur as a cluster. In fact, we did not approach it. However, we had been approached directly from the PMO shows the level of seriousness and importance given to this industry and symptoms of good governance.”. According to him, it was a close-door meeting which had a meeting one-on-one with the Prime Minister himself getting prepared to know the challenges in the industry. “ A positivity is coming when the Prime Minister had felt the importance of the Textile industry and we firmly believe that our demands would be have been met”, he said.
Even though the participants are not comfortable revealing the points they discussed, it is to be hinted that the points were around the up-skilling of the labour, creating more clusters, creating a friendly business environment for the exporters, tackling the competition and more.
It has to be noted the discussion from the event had resulted in Prime Minister mentioning in his ‘Man Ki Baat’ (words from the heart) about a woman from Kashmir working in Tirupur along with close to 90 girls, an embodiment of women empowerment.
by – B Swaminathan
