The Textiles Ministry has collected information, including Aadhaar card details, of close to 50 lakh weavers and artisans and is working to help them target a larger consumer base by collaborating with the Government’s e-Market portal and the National Informatics Centre, Textiles Minister Smriti Irani said.

“We are in the process of ensuring that the 50 lakh weavers and artisans now migrate to the GeM portal where governments across the country can procure directly from them,” Irani said at an interactive virtual session organised by FICCI Ladies Organisation on Tuesday.

GeM is the national public procurement portal for efficient and transparent procurement of goods and services by Central and State government organisations and has over 44,000 registered buyers.

Additionally, in the Ministry “we are working in collaboration with NIC to ensure that we have a platform which can help commercialise the potential of our artisans and weavers and there can be a direct sale to the citizens,” the Minister said. “They will be authenticated in terms of the output that they have of skill and craft by the Ministry of Textiles,” she added.

Irani said the Covid-19 crisis demonstrated the technological and entrepreneurial skills of the textiles industry where the taskforce constituted about 70 per cent women. She said while India was not manufacturing PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) suits at all before March this year, in the past two months it became the second largest manufacturer in the world. “The fact that the turnaround time and adaptation of technology was done in record speed is a testimony not only to Indian entrepreneurial skills but also technological skills,” she said.

To check the migration of workers from rural to urban areas, entrepreneurial abilities have to be generated at the grass root level, the Minister said. “We have to create economic opportunities and infrastructure in the rural belt,” she added.

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