Why are owners of jute mills in the country mortally afraid of competition from alternative materials and imports, and want government support, particularly in its procurement of jute bags, in perpetuity?
The two issues have come to the fore once again as the government continues to dilute mandatory jute bag procurement under the outworn Jute Packaging Mandatory Act (JPMA), 1987, and duty-free imports of sacking bags from Bangladesh and Nepal grow at a fast clip.
But to understand why the industry is resisting any further fall in government bag purchases and becoming increasingly resentful of attempts by the office of the Jute Commissioner to bring order in the functioning of mills, a travel back into history will be in order.
A look at the unseemly working and living condition of jute mill labourers that impinges on productivity too is essential.
If you come to the jute mill centres on the two banks of the Ganga not far from Kolkata, what will immediately hit you is mill workers and their families seriously cramped for space in lines of tiny dwellings in highly unhygienic conditions. The stench of raw sewage is repelling. Visitors will find living condition here revolting. But the workers themselves are resigned to living in indignity in an environment of squalor and disease.
Bengal Chatkal Mazdoor Union leader Anadi Sahu says: “Finding the hardships of Victorian workhouses unbearable, Oliver Twist uttered the famous phrase, ‘Please sir, I want some more’, and you know what followed. Unfortunately, the 250,000-odd mill workers have started believing that better housing and sanitation will forever remain a chimera for them.”
In all their charters of demand, the trade unions, however, unfailingly include better housing and sanitation facilities. In good times or difficult, the mill owners, except for a few, treat this legitimate demand with contempt.
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Not only this, the overwhelming majority of jute mills, which are mostly a century old or more, continue to work with very old spindles and looms in an unhealthy work environment, which affects the productivity and health of the workers.
The beginnings
The first jute mill in the country was set up by Scotsman George Acland when he installed spinning machinery brought from Dundee at Rishra in Bengal in 1855. That was the Victorian era when the industry here saw its first phase of growth.
Unlike any other traditional industry, which may have come within the ambit of various technology missions, most jute mills have stayed beyond the pale of any meaningful modernisation. This is despite the government providing sops for replacement of old machines from time to time so that the industry is equipped to cut conversion cost, improve product quality, introduce new jute items and products in blends with other natural fibres, and make factories healthy work places.
As jute factories still make do with machines of Victorian vintage that generate much “dust and fibre particles”, trade union leaders are left with no alternative but to draw the attention of the government and the public of high degrees to occurrences of diseases such as tuberculosis and asthma among workers, says Sahu.
The stubborn refusal by mill owners to invest in modernisation and genuine product diversification has got much to do with the assurance of regular procurement of jute bags by the government’s agencies for packing of food grain and sugar under JPMA.
The policy hurdle
As for the current financial year, New Delhi has issued the order that 90 per cent of food gain and 20 per cent of sugar will have to be “compulsorily” packed in Jute bags.
Earlier, seeing the merits of their representations that use of jute bags leads to wastage of a good amount of cement and fertilisers and also taking note of user preference, New Delhi had allowed 100 per cent packing of the two commodities in plastic bags.
Significant quality improvements in polypropylene bags resulting from some serious investment in research and development, and their marked price advantage over jute, have allowed Indian Sugar Mills Association to secure a great degree of packaging freedom from the government over the years.
Jute factories have virtually been put on notice that in the future there could be further dilution of JPMA as it applies to packing of sugar if bag supplies become irregular and complaints are received about quality.
Leave out the ones like Cheviot, Ludlow, Gloster, Dalhousie and Champdany, which are all going against the current and have done all that is needed to join the ranks of the modern textile industry, the working of the rest of jute industry is marked by opaqueness.
Jute Commissioner Subrata Gupta, whose earlier assignments gave him a good exposure to the industry, is keen to straighten out things in errant jute mills. Gupta is already in the eye of the storm after he pulled up a good number of wayward mills.
It will be long hard work to clean up the industry which has so far stubbornly refused to keep to the straight and narrow.
What may, however, work to the advantage of the regulator is that the industry is a divided house with about half a dozen modern, forward-looking groups on one side and the rest of mills on the other side. The Rs 12,000-crore industry makes 1.19 to 1.51 million tonnes of jute goods annually, depending on the size of the jute crop and fibre imports.
What does not speak well of the more-than-a-century-and-a-half-old industry is that it is stuck to making age-old products such as sacking bags and hessian cloth. The two constitute over 85 per cent of the industry’s production.
Executives of mills that are sticking to making only sacking and hessian will say the quality of Indian jute fibre is not good enough to make high-value products. Their bluff is called by successes achieved by the likes of Cheviot and Ludlow.