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Following is an excerpt from a report in the Economic Times.

The Handloom Export Promotion Council (HEPC) …

The council decided to set up three more design centres at Varanasi and Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh and Bhubaneswar in Orissa. These centres would help handloom weavers improve product quality and design and thereby, fetch a better price.

The HEPC web site is http://www.hepcindia.com/. From that site I could not find information on existing design centers. However I came across the site of National Center for Textile design in Delhi. My guess is that similar centers will be established in the three locations mentioned above. The About Us page of the this center says the following:

The National Centre for Textile Design (NCTD) has been setup in January 2001, by the Ministry of Textiles, Govt. of India,  with the objective of making innovative, ethnic and contemporary design available to the textile sector.

The main aim of the centre is to link people working in the centre with each other and to give the weavers & workers better exposure to the markets. This will enable them to have better livelihood and more sustainable development.

The centre has both online and offline activities.

The online sector will exhibit these designs nationally and globally to facilitate the textile sector in getting designs in time as per seasonal forecast requirements and to enable regions as well as to develop on each others’ concepts.

We would like people, like power loom workers etc. also to benefit from the centre. This is done in several ways as for instance exhibiting their designs on NCTD website. This will give them exposure to exporters, international buyers, design houses and will help to obtain a better price for their designs through design trends and forecasts on the website and they can respond to the demands of the market in a better way.

NCTD plan to link up Weavers’ Sevice Centres, Powe4rloom Service Centres and all other textile related sites to our main website through internet connectivity so that these centre can take quick and necessary advantages of the centre for the benefit of their members.

Trends and Forecasts
Both domestic and international forecasts are collated and provided in one place to cater to many middle level and smaller apparel and furnishings manufacturers, exporters and domestic textile traders and producers so that they can respond adequately and in a timely fashion to market requirements.

Virtual Museum of Heritage Textiles
This is a cyber museum of textiles collated down the ages. The material is sourced from other resources and kept as a library for future references. 

Design Pool
This is one of the most important components of the NCTD. This is basically a cyber collection of new individual designs, collected from different sources and posted at one location.

Handicraft Fabrics from India
This section is essentially a directory of handcrafted textiles from India which contains a visual factual information and technical specifications of the items produced.

The proposed design center will nicely compliment the following textile and handloom related institutes in Odisha.

• IIHT (Indian Institute of Handloom Technology), Baragarh
• NIFT (National Institute of Fashion Technology), Bhubaneswar
• ATDC (Apparel Training and Design Centers) centers in Odisha:
  • An Eastern zone hub at Bhubaneswar
  • An Eastern zone center at Rourkela
  • Eastern zone satellite centers at Berhampur, Baripada and Cuttack

Following are excerpts from a New Indian express report on this.

As an active member of the movement, the 59- year-old woman now earns a comfortable living by making exquisite handicraft items from dried golden grass, locally known as “kainsha”.

… I get great satisfaction from making several household handicraft items from the golden grass, says Sumalata.

More than 4,000 women from 18 villages of Kamagarh, Garh Madhupur, Antia and Jenapur gram panchayats are engaged in making handicrafts from golden grass. Raw material is supplied by handicrafts society. All these women owe their economic independence to 79- year-old Pranakrushna Mohanty, the brain behind the movement in the district.

To help women of the economically backward sections become self-reliant, Mohanty and a friend, Bhikari Patnaik struck upon training them in golden grass handicrafts, which is available in plenty in the district. …

Each handicraft item takes anywhere between a day and a month to complete, and costs between Rs 10 and Rs 1,000. But these women get only a fraction of that amount as middlemen play spoilsport here too.

Pragativadi reports that the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) has taken two Orissa villages under the cluster village program. These villages are Jayapur in Koraput district and Erkana in Khorda district. Following is an excerpt from that report.

... under the programme, the Commission would encourage leather and industry in Jayapur while it would boost bamboo craft in Erkana village. Stating that the Commission is providing all support to the artisans of these two villages to enable them to further sharpen their skills in their profession, she said that efforts are being taken to provide high-end technical support to these artisans. She also said that the Commission has selected 534 rural entrepreneurs to set up small scale industries. Joshi also said that KVIC has already set up 4853 small scale units in Orissa under the National Rural Employment Generation Programme while it has insured 1220 rural entrepreneurs under Janashree Bima yojana in the state.