Indian textile sector needs to take a moon shot – Dr Ramkumar

07 Dec '09

10 min read

Suggesting some remedial measures, Mr Seshadri said, “Rightly, the Government of India has undertaken dedicated efforts to formulate a National Fiber Policy. This Fiber Policy should encompass all fibers including natural and synthetics. It is estimated that in the 2009-10 cotton session India's production of cotton will be around 30 million bales, out of which, 10 million bales will be of below average quality.

Even though tremendous improvements have been made to enhance the cotton sector, there are still challenges with regard to cotton quality and its consistency. Given the nature of agricultural practices in India, with many farmers owning less than one hectare plots, it will be an onerous task to expect good quality and consistent quality characteristics.

“Quality variation will have adverse effect on the final product and the export earnings. The technical mission on cotton should be further enhanced to focus, on both yield and quality of cotton produced in India. Both BT cotton and hybrid varieties have played their role, in enhancing the yield. However, greater emphasis has to be placed in improving the quality and reducing the variability in cotton characteristics.

“The National Fiber Policy should place emphasis on creating a synthetic fiber base in India which can cater to the requirements of technical textiles sector. There is a need for high tenacity polyester fibers and yarns, which can also find application in geotextiles and composite sectors.

“Indian Government has done fairly good job in creating awareness and establishing four Centers of Excellence related to technical textiles sector. These centres should be the conduits for creating value-added textiles industry in India. It is not possible to have many million dollar investments such as the one by Ahlstrom in Gujarat. It is important to boost the technical textiles sector by developing converting clusters. Such converting clusters will lead to many SMEs in the technical textiles sector in India”.

Next, Dr Ramkumar outlined the steps the Indian textile sector needs to take. He began by saying, “Boost domestic consumption and build the domestic market along with which the consumption of technical textiles products in day-to-day activities and industrial sectors should be boosted.

“More importantly, with the growing middle class population in India, life-style improving textile products, such as hygiene and health care textiles will be in greater need. It will be in the interest of all stakeholders to create an industry which can produce these life-style enhancing textile products.

“As of today, there is no concerted effort among all stakeholders to develop these products and route them through marketing channels to reach consumers. There needs to be an interactive platform between the technical textiles industry and the consumer base.

For this to happen, greater awareness on how to market technical textiles and value-added textile products should be infused to potential investors; enthusiasm is a key factor in the growth of any industry, so, efforts have to be made to boost the confidence among entrepreneurs to start investing in value-added textiles sector.

“It will be good for the Indian textile industry to invest in knowledge enrichment of its human resource as this aspect is more important for the technical textile sector which is at its infancy and conventional textile industry, academic and R&D base should actively participate in international forums which will not only provide new knowledge, but also will give opportunity for networking”, he concluded by saying.

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India

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