Dynamism is the primary quality that people attribute to Dayanidhi Maran, the newly appointed Union Minister for Textiles. He proved his dynamism and vibrancy in his early avatar as the Union minister for Communication and Information Technology. The textiles industry, badly hit by the global slowdown, seems to be happy with Maran?s appointment. In Tamilnadu, which houses a large textile sector, they are very happy to have ?a young, dynamic, efficient and proven administrator? as the textile Minister. They are optimistic about his dynamic problem-solving ability.

The inaugural vision statement of Maran , made immediately after his swearing-in as the Textiles minister, stated that his aims are to have a 8 to 10% annual growth rate in the textile business, create 10 million new jobs in the next five years, and establish the National Institute of Fashion Technology in Coimbatore.

The textile industry including the spinners, weavers, processors and garment makers are looking at him for immediate succour. The industry has been ailing owing to global recession, hardening of interest rates, steep hike in cotton prices, acute power shortage, cut in export incentives, delay in the disbursement of government dues etc., for the past 2 years. Over 10 lakh people have lost their jobs and almost all textile mills including the blue chip companies have incurred huge cash losses during the last financial year.

In the knitwear sector, dominated by Tirupur region, production and exports have gone down by 10 % to 20% and over 30,000 people have lost their jobs. This is besides the thousands of migrant labourers from different parts of India who had lost their livelihoods. Industry representatives have already met Maran and submitted memorandums for incentives, tax relief, cheap finance and infrastructure investment support.

The textile sector hopes that the minister would make a quick diagnosis of the moribund industry and prescribe a comprehensive package to revive it and make it a sunshine sector. They want his support to bring back the textile industry and the garment exports sector to the growth trajectory and regain the lost ground in global competitiveness and markets.

?joseph.vackayil@expressindia.com