New Delhi: The 5th National Handloom Day will be celebrated today across the country. Union Minister of Textiles and Women and Child Development, SmritiZubinIrani, will preside over a function at VigyanBhawan in New Delhi to mark the occasion.
Minister of Petroleum & Natural Gas, Dharmendra Pradhan, and Minister of State for Animal Husbandry, Dairying & Fisheries and Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises, Pratap Chandra Sarangi, will also be present on this occasion.
The main event will be held in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. Bhubaneswar has been chosen as the venue for the main event due to its rich tradition of Handlooms. More thanfifty percent of total weavers population of India resides in Eastern and North Eastern Regions and most of them are women. The prime objective of holding the National Handloom Day in Bhubaneswar is to empower women and girls.
The following activities will be undertaken all across the country
- Distribution of Pehchan Cards and Yarn Passbooks
- Distribution of MUDRA loan
- Distribution of lighting units and certificates for construction of work sheds.
- National Handloom Day to be observed at Weavers’ Service Centres in different States.
- At 16 NIFT Campuses and Handloom Mela and exhibition, workshops, panel discussions, special stalls for handloom products at Gandhinagar and Kolkata NIFT campuses.
- Live broadcast of discussion on Twitter from digital studio of IMG Reliance, involving young designers and prominent personalities from the handloom sector.
- Symposium at Crafts Museum in New Delhi by Fashion Design Council of India with participants from Ministry of Textiles, master weavers, textile designers, fashion designers and textile experts.
- Workshop through IGNOU/NIOS to impart information about educational opportunities to weave and their wards.
The National Handloom Day is observed annually on 7th August to honour the handloom weavers in the country and also highlight India’s handloom industry. National Handloom Day seeks to focus on the contribution of handloom to the socio economic development of the country and also increase the income of weavers.
The Union Government had declared 7th of August as the National Handloom Day in July 2015 with the objective of generating awareness about the importance of the handloom industry to the socio economic development of the country. August 7 was chosen as the National Handloom Day to commemorate the Swadeshi Movement which was launched on this day in 1905 in Calcutta Town Hall to protest against the partition of Bengal by the British Government. The movement had aimed at reviving domestic products and production processes.
The first National Handloom Day was inaugurated on 7th August 2015 by the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, at the centenary of Madras University in Chennai.
