Industrialists in Uttar Pradesh have started feeling the pinch of the on-going farmers’ protest at UP-Delhi border
 
Due to Strike the movement of raw material as well as of finished goods has almost come to a grinding halt due to the blockade of road, giving a body blow to post-lockdown industrial recovery in the state.
 
A senior official of the state Industry Department admitted that the farmers’ agitation has severely hit industrial production in the state and it was coming down gradually with each passing day.
 
Around 50,000 small or big units spread across the state were getting impacted, he said.
 
There is scarcity of raw material while the units which are ready for shipment of finished products are forced to hold the same in warehouses.
 
“It is a strange situation. We are not facing protests from farmers inside the state, but the protests at the border are giving us a nightmare.
 
We are getting calls from industrialists about shortage of raw material.
 
The blockade has affected movement of trains and trucks and this in turn has hit industrial production,” the official said.
 
There are around 500 plastic units in UP and their raw material comes from Punjab and Haryana. Manmohan Agarwal, vice-president of Indian Industries Association (IIA), who also owns a paint factory, says that the supply of 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 is a hub of detergent manufacturing units and their raw material too comes from Haryana and Punjab.
 
The garment factories get their raw material from Punjab. “If the agitation continues for a week or two more, 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 due to security reasons,” said Sunil Vaish, a Kanpur-based industrialist and former IIA president.
Even Noida, which is emerging as an IT hub, has a number of plastic moulding units, which are feeling the pinch.
 
“The finished products are lying dumped in the warehouses due to the farmers’ blockade,” said Kulmani Gupta, chairman, IIA, Noida chapter.
 
“Due to 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,” Gupta said.
 
Business men cross north India feel the BJP led Modi government should give ears to the problems of the farmers