The Madhya Pradesh government has decided to directly buy fully-stitched school uniforms from private firms, serving a blow to thousands of self-help group (SHG) women engaged in the work, according to officials aware of the matter.
In a tender, which HT has seen, firms with at least ₹700 crore turnover in the last three financial years and involved in at least ₹105 crore business in fabrics with the government, will be allowed to apply for the contract. The officials said the government made the decision with the view to shift to a centralised model. State MSME minister Chetan Kashyap said the centralised procurement system was meant to support industrialists.
“Madhya Pradesh has already discussed with garment industries of the state and decided to float tender to provide stitched uniform to school students. It will boost the state economy,” said Kashyap.
The officials said the government has been directly transferring the money to the parents’ bank accounts to buy uniforms since 2024, instead of giving contracts to SHGs, adding that SHGs were unable to ensure quality of uniforms and there were delays in their deliveries. “Despite several reminders and training, the SHGs did not improve,” an education department said, requesting anonymity.
School education minister Rao Uday Pratap Singh said the new centralised mechanism will ensure uniform quality and timely delivery of uniforms. “SHG women were facing problems in supplying on time and there were issues with quality of cloth being used,” he said.
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In 2018, then chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had given SHGs the work to stitch nearly 11 million uniforms for over 5.5 million government school students from Class 1 to 8 under the State Rural Livelihood Mission.
“Initially, 40,000-50,000 women got work after training and slowly the number increased to around 90,000,” said a senior officer of the school education department, requesting anonymity.
As the quality issues were reported, the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Indore gave entrepreneurship and skill training to SHG leaders in 2021.
As the delay in the supply of uniforms continued, the officials said, the government stopped further order and also withheld money.
“It left many women debt-ridden as profit for stitching one uniform as ₹70-80 as against overall cost of ₹300 per uniform paid by the government,” said Sushma Kumari, president of SHG at Khurai.
The school education minister said, “If some irregularities or some serious complaints are reported by someone, I assure that action will be taken against them. Nothing is final.”
