BHOPAL: Rahul Gandhi’s recommendation to make Khadi mandatory for school uniforms in MP that was also seconded by CM Kamal Nath has been put on hold as state is facing acute financial crunch. School uniforms are provided for free by the state government.
Rahul Gandhi had shared a video of a meeting with MSME businessmen held in Delhi on March 2 from his official account. An industrialist from MP suggested that Khadi could be introduced as school uniform that will boost the hand-woven industry.
To which Rahul responded- let’s do it and then called up Kamal Nath to implement it. Kamal Nath told him that his government is already mulling this idea and wanted to promote hand woven industry.
Businessmen had then thanked him for this quick decision and talking to media person Kamal Nath had said he would implement it in the next academic session (2019-20).
“The government needs huge funds to purchase Khadi fabric for the uniforms of more than 80 lakh students enrolled in the government schools. We are already facing budget constraint and it is getting hard to run other schemes so there is no chance of introducing Khadi from this academic session,” said an official of School education department.
“After Lok Sabha election, school education department held a meeting to take a decision on it. But it was turned down as it was putting an extra financial burden on the government,” said a higher official of the school education department.
When contacted school education minister Prabhuram Chaudhary said, “When we implement any new thing, we have to consider so many things, especially budget. We will implement it later after arranging funds.”
Not only Khadi but the Congress-led state government dropped the idea of providing stitched school uniforms to the students, which was a major source of income of women working in a self helped groups under National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM).
Last year, about 20 lakh students had not received their uniform due to delay in distribution.
