For centuries, the women of Khurkhul village in Manipur have raised
silkworms. Tens of thousands of grey
worms with voracious appetites are kept in bamboo trays either in the
living room or a rearing shed. They are
fed fresh mulberry leaves every six hours until they spin golden yellow
cocoons of raw silk. Then, one by one,
the cocoons are boiled, and the fibrous silk is unravelled and wound
on to a stick. “Silk is an important part of
our tradition. We need it for marriage ceremonies and it is part of
our life,’’ says 20-year-old Surbala Devi.
Manipur was once a key staging post on the fabled silk route. Traders
carried silk from China’s Yunnan
province through Myanmar, across India and finally to Afghanistan where
they joined the main silk road. Now,
Manipur wants to spin tradition into profit once again. Japan’s Overseas
Economic Cooperation Fund (OECF)
has loaned Manipur $32.77m in the first phase of a project to revitalise
its silk industry. ``The Japanese built an
empire out of high quality silk for parachutes and we want to do the
same,’’ said S D Sharma, director of
Manipur’s department of agriculture. Consultants have introduced modern
Japanese sericulture methods to
Manipur hoping to boost production. Manipur cocoons yield up to 800
metres of raw silk thread each, compared
to 1,200 metres for cocoons in Japan.
Although India is one of the world’s largest silk producers, Manipur
accounts for just a fraction of the 15,000
tonnes it produces annually. By 2002-03 (April-March) the project leaders
aim to increase Manipur’s annual
silk output to 328 tonnes from 202 tonnes. Sericulture accounted for
1.48 per cent of the state’s real GDP of
$378.9m in 1995-96. That proportion is likely to rise sharply once
the industry takes hold. Villagers who have
land suitable for mulberry trees were invited to take part in the project.
About 8,690 hectares (ha) has already
been selected to grow mulberry trees. The project has encouraged villagers
to raise hybrid worms and trees
with more leaves. The sericulture project is still in its infancy but
project officials are already thinking about the
second phase, which will expand production further and look at the
processing of the silk.
In Manipur, there are no units to twist silk into thread for weaving.
Raw silk is sent to Mumbai or Karnataka.
OECF is due to inject more cash into the industry, but officials fear
Japan’s sanctions on India after the nuclear
tests could delay the additional loan. “This is the first foreign funding
Manipur has ever received in its history,’’
Mr Sharma said. “If we are successful with this project, I think it
will make it easier for us to get funding for
other projects from abroad.’’ —Reuters
Source : Economic Times. May 17. 1999