India’s Ministry of Textiles has launched a new scheme, “Integrated Handloom Cluster Development Scheme”, for the development of handloom sector from the year 2005-06, with an outlay of Rs40.00 crore ($8.7 million) for development of 20 handloom clusters throughout the country.

The scheme is set to cover all the needs of the handloom sector in each cluster for the supply of raw materials, marketing support, design input, upgrading technology and welfare of the weavers. Customised programmes will be developed for each cluster after a detailed survey and requirement analysis.

169 yarn depots in 65 clusters have already been set up and another 165 have already been planned.