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Kankaria Carnival: Giant charity bag enters records book
Ahmedabad, December 27, 2012 A huge jute bag meant for collecting donations at the
ongoing Kankaria Carnival here has entered the Limca Book of Records as
the largest jute charity bag. The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) received a provisional approval from the Limca Book of Records Wednesday.
"The Limca Book of Records has handed over the provisional approval for
the largest jute charity bag that is part of the Kankaria Carnival. The
bag with a size of 37 feet by 30 feet covering a total area of 380 square metres has been
installed inside Vyayamshala at the Kankaria lake premises," said Mayor Asit
Vora. The bag will be on display till December 31, when the week-long annual
carnival ends.
AMC commissioner Guruprasad Mohapatra said the charity received would be
distributed among the needy like anganwadis, shishu mandir and various
similar organisations, depending on the items collected. The bag, which cost Rs 5.5 lakh, received around 100 donations on the
first day of the carnival.
The bag is surrounded by a steel structure and a 30-foot high staircase
that allows people to donate things inside the bag. While jute has been
used for the bag, 4,500 kg of steel was used for the construction of truss and staircase.
A private company has prepared the bag for the AMC. As many as nine
people took six days to make it. It was revealed that the previous record holder was also from Gujarat, a resident of Surat. Source:expressindia.com
Jute to benefit from green appeal
During her cent visit to Kolkata US secretary of state Hillary Clinton
interacted with a few prominent citizens, including members of civil society, school and college students. At that meeting a well-known
fashion designer, who has been working on jute, asked her how could jute
be promoted in the US and how the two countries could work with Indian
textiles. The fashion designer also complained that the global glamour
and fashion industry was mostly disconnected with the reality of global
warming. Pat came Clinton’s response, “I think thats a very interesting
idea and I believe the best way is to connect our fashion designers with
their counterparts here in India and fashion design councils for more
environmentally sustainable materials and means of production and I will be happy to encourage things like that.”
Any jute grower or anyone connected with the jute industry would
instantly agree this could be an important way forward for the jute industry to survive and prosper. While there is need for forging new
linkages between the traditional fibre (often called the golden fibre)
and glamour and fashion industry, the jute industry in the country is still surviving on demand for packaging material for wheat, sugar and
other food stuff. And it is here that Indian Jute Mills Association
thinks that the government’s wrong planning and bunching up of orders
have been causing serious shortage in the availability of jute packaging material.
According to IJMA figures, net requirement of jute bags shot up 67 per
cent to 12.5 lakh bales. And the industry together supplied 9.5 lakh bales by the first week of May. Supplying another 2 lakh bales did not
look too difficult either. But problems cropped up in the wake of a sudden spurt in requirement from Madhya Pradesh. Madhya Pradesh’s own
requirement has gone up to 3.19 lakh bales due to a failure of their private tender. Some other states had to suffer due to abnormal increase
in MP’s requirement. Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee told the
Lok Sabha that Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh had procured more grain
than estimated, which caused the shortage of jute bags. The size of the annual sacking market is estimated to be close to Rs
7,500 crore. BT sacks are produced in the 66 operating mills of India of
which 52 are in West Bengal. Almost 40 per cent of the annual industry
production of 1.2 million tonnes is purchased by the government under the Jute Packaging Materials Act of 1987. And the current crisis
prompted the centre to ask jute units in West Bengal to increase production by 25,000 sacks from the present monthly output of 2.5 lakh
bales. And the move coincided with the beginning of the harvesting season. Jute is a rainy season crop, sown from March to May according to
rainfall and type of land and is harvested from June to September depending on whether the sowings are early or late. Jute cultivation is
mainly confined to the eastern states
West Bengal, Bihar, Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh. West Bengal alone accounts
for more than 50 per cent of total raw jute production in the country.
“The centre’s demand and purchase assurance to West Bengal jute units is
expected to boost production in the state. Assam, the other leading jute
growing state, is already expecting to register record jute production
this year, despite floods affecting about 10,000 hectares of cropland.
Assam, according its agriculture minister, expects to produce about 300,000 bales of jute this year, compared to 200,000 bales last year,”
Nilanjan Dey, director, Wishlist Capital, told FC Invest. Jute production in the state is likely to go up compared with last year as
per hectare yield has increased greatly this year. As part of its various supportive measures to resolve the problems
confronting jute growers/cultivators, the centre launched the jute technology mission (JTM) during the 11th Plan with a total outlay of Rs
355.5 crore. Under the JTM, several schemes are operational under the
Mini Mission I, II, III & IV, which benefit jute growers. Mini Mission-I
aims to strengthen agriculture research and development in jute to
improve yield and quality. Mini Mission-II is targeted towards transferring improved technology and agronomic practices in production
and post harvesting phase. Under Mini-Mission-III, market linkage of raw
jute is provided in all jute growing states. Mini Mission-IV provides for the modernisation of the jute industry, upgradation of skills and
market promotion. National Jute Board and Jute Corporation of India are
also working on projects with National Institute of Research on Jute &
Allied FibreTechnology (NIRJAFT) and Central Research Institute for Jute
and Allied Fibres (CRIJAF) to develop better jute seeds and to improve
agronomical practices for jute cultivation. Source: Financial Chronicle
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