New Delhi, June 19 (KNN) The number of artisans are increasing in the Khadi sector because of the new policies and initiatives taken by Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Ministry and Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) in recent years, said Vinai Kumar Saxena, Chairman of Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC).

He said “The share of Khadi fabric in the total textile mill production has doubled to 8.49 percent from 4.23 percent in five years due to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's clarion call to adopt Khadi.

The mill fabric production dropped to 2,012 million square metres in 2018-19 while the Khadi fabric production was 170.80 million square metres – a share of 8.49 percent in overall fabric production.

"It is encouraging for us that rise in share of Khadi production in the textiles sector in the last five years has gone from 4.23 percent to 8.49 percent, which is more than 200 percent.”

While from 1956 to 2013-14, the Khadi sector fabric production could reach the figure of 105.38 million square metres, in the last five years (from 2014-15 to 2018-19) it produced another 65.42 square million metres, he added.

He stated "We started registration of new Khadi institutions for widening the scope for employment as well as revival of defunct Khadi institutions, consequently rising the artisans number to 4,94,684. Not only that, the KVIC had also laid stress on many artisan-centric programs since 2015 like distribution of 32,000 New Model Charkhas and 5,600 modern looms.”