Khadi Board finds revival mantra!

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, Dec 26: The Khadi and Village Industries Board (KVIB), Assam has done away with its around- 15-year-old legacy of sorts! Over the past 15 years, the KVIB had been buying clothes from West Bengal for stitching the tiol Flags in Assam on the eve of every Independence Day and Republic Day. However, this year around the Board is stitching tiol Flags in the run-up to this Republic Day with locally-weaved clothes. A welcome change indeed!

Talking to this reporter, Chittaranjan Baruah of the marketing department of the Board said: “We make the tiol Flags in six different sizes – 6 ft X 4ft costing Rs 500 apiece, 3 ft X 4.5 ft costing Rs 370 apiece, 2 ft X 3 ft costing Rs 200 apiece, 1.5 ft & 2.25 ft costing Rs 130 apiece, 1 ft X 1.5 ft costing Rs 90 apiece and 6 inch X 9 inch costing Rs 60 apiece. We sold flags worth over Rs 11.33 lakh on the Republic Day last year.  On the Independence Day last year, we sold flags worth Rs 17 lakh. Since we’re making the flags this year with own clothes, we have started the work as early as November. We did distribute yarn to our around 940 registered weavers in various districts in the State this year. Locally-weaved plain clothes keep coming to the Board from various areas. We dye the clothes here in our dying centres and put the chakra of the Flag on them. Then se send the clothes to our tailoring section. We make the big flags first so as to maintain the economy of clothes and to avoid wastage. The smaller pieces of clothes can be used for flags of smaller sizes. We’ve to race against the clock.”

On marketing of the flags, Baruah said: “We’ve a widespread marketing network with as many as 44 sales outlets in different areas in the State. The outlets take the flags from Guwahati as and when they need. Till December 23 this year, we’ve supplied tiol flags worth Rs 5.60 lakh.  We’ve have set a target of tiol Flags worth Rs 20 lakh in this Republic Day.”