Bhagalpur silk industry, a tale of political neglect

This "silk district" of Bihar may have just forgotten about the Assembly elections. In a state loved by byte-collectors for its exuberant, politics-savvy citizenry, Bhagalpur marks a sharp contrast with the rest of Bihar.

No gossip shops at street corners. No high-voltage discussions over tea cups. They quietly work on handlooms and powerlooms, hardly bothering to see the posters of candidates pasted on auto-rickshaws hobbling past them or to hear the recorded speeches blaring from the campaign vehicles.

A few days before the town goes to polls, their apathy and silence is their way of protest. "These politicians stage this drama every year. We are tired of it. What have we got from them?" said Tapas Kumar Sharma, a weaver at Champanagar, a suburb of Bhagalpur town.

Driving on the bone-rattling, water-filled trenches of roads, one is struck by the thatched, dilapidated houses in a town, which boasts of a silk industry with an estimated annual turnover of around Rs 300 crore.

But, as they say, the money belongs to the "big Marwaris and seths" from Kolkata, Bangalore and other cities. They run the silk trade through local agents. An ordinary weaver earns Rs 50-70 a day by making four-five metres of silk cloth, which is exported to different countries in Europe and the US.

"Their condition can vastly improve, if the government were to provide them some capital through bank loans and schemes meant for them, say, Bunakar credit cards," said Zia-ur-Rehman, a resident of Nagra locality who owned five powerlooms.

His is wishful thinking, though. The government has shown little interest in over 200,000 weavers living in Bhagalpur. It has failed to take note of their largescale migration to other cities over 15 years. Thanks to erratic power supply, many weavers have sold their powerlooms.

Whatever industries are left in Bhagalpur today are not because of the government but despite it. Railway Minister Lalu Prasad has turned a deaf ear to the persistent demands from Bhagalpur industrialists to connect the town with southern states. Their demand for an airport has met a similar fate.

The law and order problem is the proverbial last straw. "Many industrialists came here but left soon. Who wants his son to be kidnapped every now and then for ransom?" said MD Agrawal, chief of the local unit of the PHD Chambers of Commerce & Industry.

Bihar Spun Silk Mill in Bhagalpur stopped production about 15 years back when its 300 employees stopped getting their salary. The mill has not been officially closed or declared sick. So workers with their total annual salariesof Rs 1.80 crore are still on the roll hoping to get their pay some day.

According to Agrawal, there is tremendous scope for the growth of food-processing and agro-based units in Bhagalpur. "We have so much of mangoes, lichies, tomatoes and other products. Then we have edible oilseeds and mustard. Our rice called Katarni is better than Basmati. But there is no means to export it."

At the entrance of the district industries centre office, a huge board has names of about 500 potential industries in the area. Ask the general manager how many of them finally came up, you draw a blank and a grin.