General Bipin Rawat, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Ministry of Defence has urged textile industry to come forward and support the defence forces with innovative products of technical textiles.
Addressing the 9th edition of TECHNOTEX 2021 he said that a large part of technical textile-based products for defence forces is being imported. And if Indian industry comes up with such innovative ‘Made in India’ products, then import of such products can be stopped completely.
“We are ready to support the industry and will take the same to our forward posts for better understanding of requirement and functioning of our products. We are hopeful that Ministry of Textiles (MoT) and Indian entrepreneurs will help us to arrange such products within the India,” he said.
Further sharing the need of defence forces, General Rawat said that besides clothes for extreme weather conditions, we also need very innovative clothing which can save our soldiers from radar. He added that these dresses should be innovative enough to help easily and quickly identify whether the person next to us is our friend or a foe.
CDS highlighted the various products’ range of technical textiles andsaid, “Defence forces also required such jackets which can heal the wound. We are also exploring space sector so we need clothing for the same. Everything from clothing to entire range of textile-based products should be light in weight.”
He assured full support to the industry and said that making such innovative products will help the vision of self-reliant India (Atmanirbhar Bharat).
The event, organised by MoT and FICCI, was also addressed by Upendra Prasad Singh, Secretary, MoT; Mekapati Goutham Reddy, Minister of Industries, Commerce, IT and Skill Development, Andhra Pradesh; Captain Dibya Sankar Mishra, Minister – Industries, MSME, Energy & Home (MoS), Odisha and Rajeev Gopal, Co-Chair, FICCI Technical Textile Committee.
