Sericulture in India

Though India is the second largest silk producer in the World after China, it accounts for just 5% of the global silk market, since the bulk of Indian silk thread and silk cloth are consumed domestically. Germany is the largest consumer of Indian silk. The sericulture industry is land-based as silk worm rearing involves over 700,000 farm families and is concentrated in the three Southern states of Karnataka, Tamilnadu and Andhra Pradesh. (The states of Assam and West Bengal are also involved in the industry to a certain extent).

The present market context for silk in India is one of vigorously growing internal demand for silk fabrics, with growth rates of above 10% per year. It is mostly for traditional (sari type) design and does not impose sophisticated quality requirements upon the industry. This situation is likely to continue, unless Indian sericulture is able to provide sufficient quantities of raw silk at affordable prices. The present trends represent a limitation to price increases for silk produced in India by import from other silk producing countries like China, Brazil, Korea etc., as well as by substitution with other fibres including by artificial silk. It also appears unlikely that the present demands can be met merely by expanding mulberry area in order to increase cocoon and raw silk production. Future additional output in raw silk will therefore mostly have to come from substantial productivity increases, mainly area and labour productivity.

Concurrently there is a growing demand for silk fabric among the growing Indian middle class and young urban consumers. These modern silk fabrics typically are produced by the expanding power loom weaving industry. The quality requirements imposed by this trend can only be met by bivoltine raw silk, although it is possible to produce high quality multi-bivoltine silk for conventional powerlooms. The bulk of today’s world export demand is almost exclusively based on high graded quality bivoltine raw silk. If Indian sericulture is unable to generate a substantial production of bivoltine raw silk, these important market segments will continue to be lost to outside competitors.

Hence, three main market segments offer great opportunity to India’s silk industry: (i) the broadening domestic traditional demand multi bivoltine based, (ii) the domestic demand for non-traditional silk fabrics, based atleast partly on non-graded bivoltine raw silk, (iii) the vast and expanding international market for raw silk, silk fabrics and ready-mades, based on graded bivoltine silk, an export potential as yet relatively little exploited by India.

In one of the efforts of the Indian Government to promote the sericulture industry, the National Sericulture Project (NSP) was initiated as a national project operational in 17 States in India. The project funded by the Central and State Governments together with an input of foreign funds, has a credit portion from the World Bank and a grant contribution from Swiss Development Corporation. The project was started in 1989 for a period of six years with the objectives oriented toward increased production, improved productivity, quality and equity. One of the critical elements taken into consideration by the project was the dominant involvement of the Central and State Government organisations in the promotion of sericulture.