A record sale of village goods and khadi worth 50,000 crore was seen last year. This is good news showing growth in rural economy.
Khadi sales has seen a manifold rise as the government made a push for its growth. Added to this was Prime Minister Narendra Modi's appeal to the citizens to buy Khadi. Reports say that the sales of Khadi saw a 33% jump, from 1,635 crores in 2015-16 to 2,005 crores last year.
However, the surprise increase which attracted attention of all was the increase in sales of products such as honey, soaps, cosmetics, furniture and organic food items. And the good part is that women play an active role in the manufacture of most of these produce in rural idea.
Many NGOs have also come in the field with specific programmes to help rural artisans and added to this is the help coming in with IT, produce being displayed on various web sites.
Read more of this in a report by John Sarkar and Sidhartha in TOI....
