despite being the largest employment provider the textile sector has fewer applicants appearing under textile engineering fibre science tf in graduate aptitude test in engineering gate in 2021 only a total of 2026 candidates applied in the tf category out of the total 883 lakh applicationshighlighting the reason behind it deepankar choudhury gate 2021 organising chairman says that limited mtech and research programme in this field led to few takers for this subject in gateonly iit delhi offers mtech and phd programmes in textile and fibre engineering neither psus nor big textile companies prefer gate score for recruitment of tf candidates says choudhury there may be an increase in the number of students for the subject if textile companies start recruiting candidates based on gate score he addsother than iit delhi nit jalandhar institute of chemical technology mumbai anna university and veermata jijabai technological institute are among the few institutions where mtech and phd programmes are offered in the textile sectorfuture growthcurrently more than 45 crore people are employed directly in the textile sector while another 6 crore people are in the allied sector according to government data employment in the sector is expected to increase to 23 lakh by 2024 from the present 16 lakhgovernment is also implementing amended technology upgradation fund scheme to upgrade technologymachinery of the textile industry with an outlay of rs17822 crore during 20162022 which will attract investment of rs1 lakh crore and generate employment in the textile sector by 2022what makes students apprehensivepune girl ashwini sahadeo kanekar who was first in the all india rank gate 2021 under tf is concerned about the limited choice of technical institutions to pursue postgraduate and doctorate programmes in this fieldthere are enormous opportunities in this field but the shortage of institutions offering higher education makes the subject least preferred among gate aspirants says ashwini who graduated in textile chemistry from dkte societys textile engineering institute based in ichalkaranji maharashtra in 2020 she aspires to be an academician after finishing her higher educationwhy the shortage of courseson shortage of masters and research programmes monica sikka associate professor department of textile technology nit jalandhar says only a few institutes in india offer btech in textile engineering or allied subjects which could be the reason for a smaller number of pg and research programmesthe necessity of the branch is undervalued and people are not aware of the outcome says sikka who also believes that a major part of the textile sector is unorganised and hampers the placement opportunities and pay packages for graduates and subsequently making it less lucrative as compared to other branchessome of the students even opt for skill development programmes to become eligible for it banking jobs among others in view of the necessity of skilled people in this sector textile companies need to offer competitive pay packages to retain talents collective efforts are needed to be in place to make the textile sector innovative and take it to the new heights adds sikka