Problems of Khadi Shilpa:
Written by: Nilufa Alam
Break down after liberation war: Khadi Shilpa saw the golden time in post independence period. After the liberation war, the dark time started to come. In that period, garments machines were seriously damaged due to war. So, the demands of Hand-loom get pressurized in importing based country.
No statistics to plan anything: there is hardly any proper statistics of the number of Khadi workers. It was known that, government wanted to make a survey over Khadi workers during 1982-83. But, the survey could not find the exact statistics because of some lacking. As the workers were illiterate, the fraud middlemen used the opportunity of cheating with them. They misused all the helps provided by government for Khadi workers.
Impact of garments industry: Presently, we are worlds one of the best garments item exporters of the world. Most of the people who were used to work for Khadi shilpa are now engaged with garments industry. So, it is found that, Khadi workers joined in garments industry.
Suggestions for the betterment of khadi items:
- Strong association: Existing Khadi workers should make a strong association to fight for any kind of challenges by themselves to protect the industry. If there is a strong association, there is chance to fight in a group.
- Proper branding: Now a day, we see people buying a branded shirt even at 1500-5000 taka. Whenever there is a seal of a renowned brand, people do not care about the cost. Sometimes, after seeing the brand logo, people even do not care about the quality of product too. Because, people goes for choosing their favourite brand. Once upon a time, Khadi Shilpa flourished. Because, Mahatma Gandhi was the Brand ambassador of khadi products. But, we did not see any kind of productive branding activities for Khadi products. If, we can create a positive brand impression about Khadi products, this is very much possible to see people going for mass production of Khadi. This is also possible to see, people from all around the country would look for the khadi fashion as their first choice.
- Forming strong channel of Distribution: There must have been a good platform to create a channel of distribution. We read that, during the British period, Ovoy Asrom was used as a center for channel of distribution for Khadi. Now, if we want to go back to the development of Khadi Shilpa, there should be something like that or better than that one.
- Government’s special consideration: Government has to take some very effective initiatives to pull up the almost dieing Khadi industry in different ways. Government can give some special interest free loan to Khadi workers; government can give some priority in different activities.
- Making subsidized Khadi House by Businessmen: Country’s giant business people can come up with subsidized Khadi house.
- Media coverage: Media can influence people to buy Khadi dresses. If there is demand, there are lots of investors who can really come up with large amount of money to invest for Khadi.
