Take a sneak into where your lovely silk saree or silk shirt comes from...

I grabbed these pictures in a Sericulture unit about 60 kms from Bangalore (Sulatanpet).

The process of drawing silk fiber from the cocoon is called ‘reeling’. The cocoons are allowed to boil in hot water and the silk fiber is unwound from the cocoons. The silk am told consists of two proteins, the inner core of fibroin and an outer cover of gum sericin. During reeling, the cocoons are processed in hot water at 95-97 degrees C for 10-15 minutes. This process is called cooking.
This enables the sericin portion to get softened and make unwinding easy without breaks. The cocoons after cooking are reeled in hot water in different types of machines.
In India, 61% of the silk amounting to 1,320 tonnes is reeled on the country-type charka (spinning-wheel)

In India, the Sericulture unit is critical to rural development because it:

1. Provides for off-farm employment.
2. Prevents the migration of rural people.
   

As per the recent numbers - 60 lakh persons are engaged in various sericulture activities in the country and every 3.07 kg of silk produced and used generates gainful employment of one man year.
This potential is par-excellence and no other industry generates this kind of employment, especially in rural areas, hence, sericulture is used as a tool for rural reconstruction.