The industrialists have started feeling the pinch of the ongoing farmers’ protest at Uttar Pradesh-Delhi border as the movement of raw material as well as finished goods has almost come to a grinding halt due to the road blockade, giving a body blow to the industrial recovery in UP.
A senior official of the Industry department told this reporter that the farmers’ agitation has severely hit industrial production in the state as it is coming down gradually with each passing day.
The Industry department officials say that around 50,000 small or big units spread across the state have started feeling the pinch of the farmer’s stir. There is scarcity of raw material while the units which are ready for shipment of finished products are forced to keep it dumped in warehouses.
“This is a peculiar situation in UP. We are not facing protests from farmers inside the state but the protest at the border is giving us a nightmare. We are getting calls from industrialists about a shortage of raw materials. The blockade has affected movement of trains and trucks and this in turn has hit our industrial production,” the official said.
There are around 500 plastic units in UP and their raw material comes from Punjab and Haryana.
Indian Industries Association (IIA) Vice-President Manmohan Agarwal, who owns a paint factory, says that the raw material has dried up.
“The workers are sitting idle because production has come to a standstill. We keep raw material for a week. We have exhausted that,” he said.
Kanpur Nagar is a hub of detergent manufacturing units and their raw material comes from Haryana and Punjab. The garment factories get their raw material from Punjab.
“If the agitation continues, the industry in Kanpur will start incurring a loss of Rs 50 crore per day. Due to the agitation, transporters are reluctant to ferry goods for security reasons,” said Sunil Vaish, a Kanpur-based industrialist and former president of IIA.
Even Noida, which is emerging as an IT hub, is famous for plastic moulding. “After the agitation, industries in Noida have suffered a loss of around Rs 4,000 crore. If the stalemate continues, we will have to shut down most of the industrial units till the situation normalises,” said IIA, Noida chapter Chairman Kulmani Gupta.