Employment Generation through Sericulture in...

Employment Generation through Sericulture in India

Author Name : Dr. T. Venugopala Swamy

ABSTRACT Sericulture plays a major role in rural employment, poverty alleviation, and earning foreign exchange. A lot of entrepreneurial opportunities are available in various fields of sericulture. It is practiced in various states, viz., Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, and West Bengal, and states like Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra have also started practicing sericulture. The non-mulberry (also called Vanya silk) sericulture is practiced in Assam, Jharkhand, Orissa, and Madhya Pradesh. More than 6 million people are involved in sericulture activities. Agriculture is an agro-based industry. It involves cultivation of host plants and rearing of silkworms for the production of cocoon to produce raw silk. The major activities of sericulture comprise food-plant cultivation to feed the silkworms that spin silk cocoons and reeling the cocoons for unwinding the silk filament for processing and weaving to produce the valuable products. India is the second largest producer of silk in the world, next to China, with 14.7% share in global raw silk production. Silk, considered the queen of fibres, is proteinaceous in nature. The bulk of commercial silk is produced from the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori. Sericulture is a rural, cottage, and agro-based industry of cultivating food plants, rearing silkworms, conducting silk reeling, twisting, dyeing, weaving, etc. that provides continuous employment to 6817 thousand people in India. The current annual production of 16957 MTs of mulberry raw silk and proportionate consumption of food plants in 179 thousand hectares spread over 51 thousand villages and the generation of 125 thousand tonnes of silk cocoons and 24 crore silkworm seed indicate the colossal quantum of waste and pollution generation in the sericulture sector and require perceptive management for ecological security, value addition, and employment generation.