The freedom struggle and connected with it the constructive work started by Gandhiji in the whole country is the main root of establishment of Gujarat Khadi Gramodhyog Mandal. Gokhale, Gandhiji roam about in the whole country and saw that the country is under the thumb of slavery. Agriculture and village industry the spinal cord of the village are now just in the namesake and villages have started
breaking down. Gandhiji had some idea of spinning wheel but had not seen it personally. At that time Ahmedabad was the main centre of handweaving and so he started weaving with the help of mill yarn in the Ashram. This cloth was known as swadeshi-native, but he really wanted to spread self-reliance with the help of hand-spinning yarn. At last Gangaben got him the spinning wheel from vijapur. Initially, he started spinning with mill slivers. After that he found out how to make hand-carding and hand-slivers. After getting this process regularized he started his imaginative khadi activity. For the development of khadi activity, Gandhiji established Khadi Vidyalaya. Many People from all over the country came for training in khadi at Ashram. Thus Satyagraha Ashram became the first office of Maha Gujarat Khadi Mandal. Due to hand-spinning industry activity of khadi production progressed and as such institute known as “Akhil Bhartiya Charkha Sangh” came into being. Gandhiji stayed in Gujarat and so his inspiration and foresightedness was the main contribution in establishment of the Mandal keeping in mind the aim of khadi, village industries, agriculture and development of villages. Maha Gujarat Khadi Gramodhyog Mandal was established constitutionally on 17th January, 1940. Its office was in Bardoli. After the formation of Gujarat State, the name was changed to Gujarat Khadi Gramodhyog Mandal. Mandal’s founder President was SARDAR VALLABHBHAI PATEL. After him Ex-Prime Minister SHRI MORARJI DESAI and then came MINABEN NANAVATI and SHRI MOTIBHAI CHAUDHARI as presidents respectively. Now SHRI JETENDRABHAI DESAI is the President. Main aim of Mandal is “to give relief to the poor to improve Gujarat’s common people’s economic condition and to reduce unemployment, the managing committee has started proper activity in this respect”. The main purpose of this activity was production of khadi, propaganda of khadi and distribution of khadi. Today Vatva, Bapunagar, Sabarmati Jail, Dhandhuka, Shihore, Limbdi, Surendranagar, Poshina, Jambusar all these nine spinning weaving centres receive employment sitting at home through this Mandal khadi production activity. Moreover, we are running village industries like HAND MADE PAPER (Kalam khush), CARPENTARY BLACKSMITHY, NEEM SOAP, OIL SPILLER and SPICES. Mandal has its own arrangements for the distribution of khadi and village industries. For this mandal runs totally 11 khadi bhandars. 5 at Ahmedabad and one each at Nadiad, Vadodara, Bharuch, Surat, Dakor and Khedbrahma. Mandal has 3 metadoors through which they send the goods to the distribution centres. In today’s computer era for the self-reliance of the khadi activity, one has to research for the production to distribution process to compete with the running time. Mandal is also thinking hard for the production/distribution of polyvastra.
