On National Handloom Day, 7 August, Union Coal and Mines Minister and BJP Telangana president G. Kishan Reddy turned the spotlight on India's weaving communities — and on the central government's ambition to transform the country into a global textile powerhouse by 2030.

A sector second only to farming

In a detailed post in Telugu addressed to 'priya netannalu' ('dear weaver brothers and sisters'), Kishan Reddy underscored the scale of what is at stake. The textile and handloom sector directly and indirectly employs nearly 5 crore people across India — making it the country's largest employer after agriculture. It also generates significant foreign exchange, two facts that together explain why successive governments have treated it as a strategic priority rather than a heritage footnote.

The minister cited the central government's '5F Vision' — Farm to Fibre, Fibre to Fabric, Fabric to Fashion, Fashion to Foreign Markets — as the organising logic behind current policy. Paired with the Make in India programme, the framework is designed to capture value at every link in the chain, from the cotton field to the export invoice.

The Warangal PM MITRA park and Telangana's cotton belt

For Telangana specifically, Kishan Reddy pointed to a PM MITRA Mega Textile Park being set up in Warangal district — a region with deep handloom roots. The park is intended to house both traditional weaving methods and advanced machinery, bridging craft heritage with industrial scale. PM MITRA (Mega Integrated Textile Region and Apparel) parks received Cabinet approval in 2021, with seven locations identified nationwide; Warangal's inclusion positions Telangana's weaving clusters directly within that national grid.

Cotton farmers in the region are also part of the equation. The minister stated that the central government has spent over Rs 69,860 crore procuring cotton from Telangana farmers under the Minimum Support Price mechanism — a figure that, if borne out, would represent one of the largest MSP outlays for a single state's cotton crop.

Schemes, technology, and the Rs 9 lakh crore export target

The policy toolkit Kishan Reddy listed is wide: the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for man-made fibre and technical textiles, the National Handloom Development Programme, the Raw Material Supply Scheme, and the Weavers MUDRA Scheme. Together, these are meant to give weavers access to modern looms, raw material, worksheds, design support, marketing channels, credit, and social security.

Technology is now part of the pitch too. The minister highlighted the integration of Artificial Intelligence, automation, and advanced analytics into the sector to raise productivity, quality, and market reach — a signal that the government sees handloom's future as digitally augmented, not just tradition-preserved.

The headline ambition: grow textile exports to Rs 9 lakh crore by 2030. That target, combined with the infrastructure push and scheme architecture, is the government's answer to competition from textile giants in Southeast Asia and Bangladesh.

Kishan Reddy closed with a direct appeal to citizens — buy handloom. The minister's message: preserving a craft and building an export economy are, in this case, the same act.