The Hindu Business Line : Kalam calls for tech intervention to upgrade handlooms

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Coimbatore Feb. 25 The President Mr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam has suggested expediting technology input to handloom sector in areas like <149>fabric design, weavers' skill upgradation through training and fashion designing. The technology intervention is needed to improve productivity of the decentralised sector and enhance the per capita income of the weavers, he said.

Inaugurating the golden jubilee celebrations of the South India Textile Research Association (SITRA) here on Saturday<149>, the President said the handloom sector in Tamil Nadu had 12 lakh weavers under 1,250 cooperatives and only 50 per cent of these weavers cooperatives run <149>profitably. This called for urgent technology intervention and SITRA can <149>take up a lead in revitalising the sector in partnership with banks and textile industry leadership<149>. This would enable tripling the revenue earning capability of the handlooms from the existing Rs 600 crore to Rs 1,800 crore over the next three years.

Commending the R&D role played by SITRA especially in productivity studies and instrumentation for the textile sector, Mr Kalam wanted the premier textile research body to rechannelise its energies into developing textile machinery models for the world market. The President pointed out that although SITRA had developed 25 textile machinery/instruments during its five decade services, the Chinese textile machinery were found cheaper <149>and the high-end textile machinery from Korea were regarded cheaper, the President said adding that in order to enhance its outcome in patented technologies, SITRA could go for more partnership research with the country's other textile research associations in Ahmedabad, Mumbai or Delhi through knowledge sharing. India<149> needed to foray into forward looking research such as nano-technology and its application in textiles for which TRAs <149>like<149> SITRA should work with national institutions like<149> IISc, Bangalore, he said.

The doyen of textile industry and chairman of the Lakshmi Mills Company Mr G.K. Sundaram released SITRA's two golden jubilee publications at the inauguration, which were received by Mr Kalam.<149>

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