Handloom Export Promotion Council to set up 3 new design centers; one to be in Bhubaneswar
Bhubaneswar- Cuttack- Puri, HRD-n-EDUCATION (details at orissalinks.com), Khadi and Village industries, Khordha, Textiles, TOI, Economic Times, Vocational education July 22nd. 2010, 3:37pmFollowing is an excerpt from a report in the Economic Times.
The Handloom Export Promotion Council (HEPC) …
The council decided to set up three more design centres at Varanasi and Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh and Bhubaneswar in Orissa. These centres would help handloom weavers improve product quality and design and thereby, fetch a better price.
The HEPC web site is http://www.hepcindia.com/. From that site I could not find information on existing design centers. However I came across the site of National Center for Textile design in Delhi. My guess is that similar centers will be established in the three locations mentioned above. The About Us page of the this center says the following:
The National Centre for Textile Design (NCTD) has been setup in January 2001, by the Ministry of Textiles, Govt. of India, with the objective of making innovative, ethnic and contemporary design available to the textile sector.
The main aim of the centre is to link people working in the centre with each other and to give the weavers & workers better exposure to the markets. This will enable them to have better livelihood and more sustainable development.
The centre has both online and offline activities.
The online sector will exhibit these designs nationally and globally to facilitate the textile sector in getting designs in time as per seasonal forecast requirements and to enable regions as well as to develop on each others’ concepts.
We would like people, like power loom workers etc. also to benefit from the centre. This is done in several ways as for instance exhibiting their designs on NCTD website. This will give them exposure to exporters, international buyers, design houses and will help to obtain a better price for their designs through design trends and forecasts on the website and they can respond to the demands of the market in a better way.
NCTD plan to link up Weavers’ Sevice Centres, Powe4rloom Service Centres and all other textile related sites to our main website through internet connectivity so that these centre can take quick and necessary advantages of the centre for the benefit of their members.
Trends and Forecasts
Both domestic and international forecasts are collated and provided in one place to cater to many middle level and smaller apparel and furnishings manufacturers, exporters and domestic textile traders and producers so that they can respond adequately and in a timely fashion to market requirements.Virtual Museum of Heritage Textiles
This is a cyber museum of textiles collated down the ages. The material is sourced from other resources and kept as a library for future references.Design Pool
This is one of the most important components of the NCTD. This is basically a cyber collection of new individual designs, collected from different sources and posted at one location.Handicraft Fabrics from India
This section is essentially a directory of handcrafted textiles from India which contains a visual factual information and technical specifications of the items produced.
The proposed design center will nicely compliment the following textile and handloom related institutes in Odisha.
- IIHT (Indian Institute of Handloom Technology), Baragarh
- NIFT (National Institute of Fashion Technology), Bhubaneswar
- ATDC (Apparel Training and Design Centers) centers in Odisha:
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July 22nd, 2010 at 11:18 pm
In Orissa, ideally such an institution should be set up in Sambalpur. Sambalpuri is synonymous with the design pattern that is used in Orissa’s most recognizable hand loom products, so it is only natural that such a center should be set up in the city. There is a crying need to spread out such centers to cities other than Bhubaneswar.
Development in Orissa is increasingly centered around the Bhubaneswar region. While this is natural and inevitable but every effort should be made to spread out economic development to other parts of the state given that many of these regions are at the bottom of most indicators in India.
Recently a study by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHDI) revealed that while Orissa has been improving on some fronts it continues to remain one of the poorest regions in India, separated just by a couple of statistical decimals from the BIMARU states. I am assuming that most parts of Orissa with the exception of Bhubaneswar/Cuttack and to a certain extent Rourkela are regions that need greater development whether it be new the establishment of new industries or institutions.
July 23rd, 2010 at 4:32 am
This should be at Sambalpur as it epitomises the handloom nervecentre of Odisha. However, we should always accept that Maniabandha and Nuapatna area of Athagarh (Cuttack Dist), Berhampur Area and even Subarnapur area has a great potential in handloom. They have their unique identity in their prints. I would like to suggest that the centre should take care of all the requirements of the state.
July 23rd, 2010 at 6:00 am
I dont understand whats the logic to setup the institute at BBSR.There are places like Sambalpur,Bargarh and Bolangir which deserve the institutes as these places are the nerve center for handlooms.
July 23rd, 2010 at 4:53 pm
Berhampur is known as the SILK CITY of Orissa and there are 10000 people in Berhampur city alone who earn their living from silk weaving. What the state Government has done is not only late but simply inadequate. Once upon a time Berhampuri Silk sarees were compared with Sarees of Kanjeevaram, Dharmavaram and Banaras but today it is struggling for survival. Only naming Berhampur as Silk City is certainly not the solution. As demanded by the Berhampur Chamber of Commerce, an Apparel Park need to be established in Berhampur along with an Institute of Design. If labourerers of Ganjam can make Surat the textile hub of India so can they contribute towards the textile sector of Orissa.