 "Industry rues 200 acres of prime land lying idle in Kanpur")
The vast land parcels held by long defunct mills of National Textile Corporation (NTC) in Kanpur has been causing heartburn amongst local industrialists, especially those associated with the beleaguered hosiery sector that directly supports the livelihood of 1,00,000 people.
The total acreage of NTC mills in Kanpur is about 200 acres and today they sit as virtual white elephants in the middle of the bustling city even as the local hosiery sector struggles in the absence of a composite industrial hub.
Eleven NTC mills in UP, including half dozen in Kanpur, had stopped functioning almost two decades back. Successive attempts at their revival with consolidated financial packages of almost Rs 500 crore by the Centre have only came a cropper so far. The total land of NTC mills in UP is valued at about Rs 1,750 crore.
The defunct mills, once hallmarks of the erstwhile ‘Manchester of the East’ – a sobriquet for the industrial town of Kanpur, are located in the most prime locations such as Civil Lines, Kidwai Nagar, Fazalganj etc. The machinery of some of the defunct units have been scrapped and they merely stand as barren stretch of land.
Owing to unbridled horizontal growth, these mills over time got surrounded with haphazard human settlements around it. This ultimately proved to be their death knell. As Kanpur failed to keep pace with peers in civic infrastructure, the sustainability of mills suffered irreparably.
Around the same time, South Indian states emerged as the new textile manufacturing hubs as they judiciously integrated the raw material availability and processing with the final markets. Better transport connectivity and seaports in vicinity was another factor that contributed greatly to their proliferation. As mills in South India grew in strength, Kanpur mills shut down.
Now, the hosiery industry has demanded that the central government utilised the vast expanses held by NTC to relocate ancillary units, especially small stitching factories, which are scattered throughout the main city areas.
Most big units engaged in hosiery knitting, processing and cutting are located outside the city limits in industrial enclaves developed by the UP State Industrial Development Corporation (UPSIDC), which itself is infested with inertia.
“The small stitching units do not require much space and an individual unit could be set upon 500 sq ft of land. Since these units are presently located in city areas, they are not connected to the industrial feeder and therefore lack uninterrupted power supply. This severely affects their work during power cuts and in turn delays the whole chain of hosiery,” UP Hosiery Manufacturers Association patron Balram Narula told Business Standard.
He is also the Managing Director of Jet Knitwears Private Limited, Kanpur’s best known cotton hosiery brand.
Since, stitching is done with machines, power is vital for such units and Kanpur has always faced acute power shortage in domestic feeders.
“Stitching is the final element in hosiery and any bottleneck at this point impedes the whole production and affects marketing of final products. This results in losses and impairs our competitive edge vis-à-vis competition in other states,” Narula rued.
In May 2015, a delegation of industrialists had submitted a memorandum to union textiles minister Santosh Gangar through Kanpur Member of Parliament Murli Manohar Joshi urging the Centre to utilise NTC land for strengthening the value chain of the hosiery sector.
“We want the Centre to devise an action plan to rehabilitate stitching units on the land of defunct mills and provide all facilities under one roof to help hosiery sector cut on production time and costs,” Northern India Hosiery Manufacturers Association president Manoj Banka said.
There are about 500 cotton hosiery units apart from over a thousand small knitting, processing and stitching units across Kanpur.
The nearly Rs 500-crore Kanpur hosiery industry, which ranks amongst the top three domestic cotton hosiery centres in India alongside Tirupur (Tamil Nadu) and Kolkata (West Bengal), has just about managed to survive the onslaught of competition and its utter failure to upgrade plant, machinery and manpower skills.
In most cases, the land had been leased by the Uttar Pradesh government. However, with the closure of units, the issue remains stuck between the central and state governments as to the disposal of land or their utilisation afresh.
During his recent visit to Kanpur, Gangwar had again met local industrialists, who reiterated their demand. “The union minister told us that he had asked the NTC to study our proposal and to ascertain feasibility,” Narula informed.
