Parliamentary Standing Committee report on Labour has criticized the Indian Textiles Ministry for its failure to use the budgetary grant of Rs. 70 billion for 2012-13, which was later revised to Rs. 45 billion.
In its report submitted to the Parliament, the Committee headed by Dara Singh Chauhan, said the ‘Revival, Reform and Restructuring Package for Handloom sector’ and the Mill Gate Price Scheme did not deliver desired results.
As the then Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukheree announced the ‘Revival, Reform and Restructuring Package for Handloom sector’ in his 2011-12 Budget proposals, a sum of Rs. 29 billion was allocated for the same. This amount was later reduced to Rs. 6 billion, but the Ministry used only Rs. 2.91 billion during last fiscal.
Against projections of 45 apex, 16,000 primary weavers co-operative societies (PWCs) and 600,000 individual commercial weavers, the scheme was extended to only 23 apex, 3,750 PWCs and 52,000 commercial weavers.
The report said that it was quite depressing for the Parliamentary Committee to learn that the Ministry of Textiles failed to spot beneficiaries for debt restructuring and loan waiver, New Indian Express reported. The Committee said that though the Government is close to finalize a revised package, it could not understand as to why, initially it announced a populist package without doing any basic research.
The panel also noted that the Ministry’s flagship Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (TUFS) programme has limited scope, and it by and large only benefits the industrialized states. According to the Committee report, though the Government has used around Rs. 16.399 billion since launch of TUFS, the technology upgradation has remained lopsided.
Upon examination of the data on the state-wise subsidy allocation under TUFS, it becomes apparent that most of the grants have moved to already industrialized states like Maharashtra and Gujarat, while poor states like Assam, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh trail behind. While Maharashtra and Gujarat drew subsidies worth Rs. 740.9 million and Rs. 1.797 billion, respectively, states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Assam got only Rs. 880,000, Rs. 200,000, Rs. 70 million and Rs. 1.5 million, respectively, the report stated.
The Committee thus suggested that the time has ripened to pay highest attention to the TUFS, to balance the skewed technology upgradation.
