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| His company, Sanjay Engineering Works, was the first manufacturing unit that became operational at the Shyama Prasad Mukherjee industrial estate at Bawana in north west Delhi.
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| A fortnight ago, however, Ram decided that enough was enough. He shut his Bawana plant and relocated it to where it used to be sited, at Pira Garhi. The plant had been evicted from there because it didn't conform with Delhi's master plan.
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| India's metropolises are polluted and crowded. Several state governments have been trying to tackle the problem by moving industry out, sometimes with a nudge or two from the courts.
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| But as Ram's case illustrates, not all such efforts have met with success. In late 2000, the Supreme Court ordered the state administration to seal all enterprises that operated in areas in violation of the land-use pattern the master plan prescribed.
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| The order applied to over 1.5 lakh establishments, including seemingly innocuous ones like tailoring shops. The list of units to be relocated was later pruned to include only those that were considered polluting.
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| The Supreme Court's deadline for relocating industrial units from non-conforming areas in Delhi to the industrial estates at Narela and Bawana expired on December 31, 2002.
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| Seven months down the line, only 2,707 of the 16,257 plots in Bawana plots have been allotted. Some 100 units now dot the Bawana landscape, and 146 are still being built.
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| What is more, not all the 100 units are up and running -- only nine have managed to obtain the mandatory licences and are in operation. Mind you, the industrial estate is supposed to house 16,000 units.
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| So what's the problem? Ram claims that the high transport cost has priced him out of the market. Bawana is not exactly in the heart of Delhi and that throws up its own set of problems.
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| For example, R K Udyog started manufacturing in March this year. Like eight others in the 1903.36-acre industrial estate, R K Udyog has to house its labourers in its premises.
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| To procure something as basic as a matchbox, they have to travel at least 5 km.
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| Although water pipes have been laid in the estate, the factories there don't get any water as yet.
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| So factory owners have to provide their workers with bottled water and pump ground water for their factories -- something that pushes up costs.
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| Rajesh Premi, who has a plant at Bawana's sector four area (the industrial estate is divided into five sectors in which the nine functional units are dispersed) says that Delhi Jal Board officials think it's not worth their while to give connections to just one or two establishments.
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| Nor is the power supply position quite hunky dory. As if daily 6-8 hour power cuts were not enough, the Tata-run North Delhi Power Ltd cuts power off to the entire area even if there is a fault with the grid of just one sector. Rubbing salt into this wound, the entire area is plunged into darkness after sunset.
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| There simply are no street lights on the metalled roads and although a Central Reserve Police Force Police campus exists nearby, the police rarely patrol the estate, raising questions about safety.
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| Manufacturers are also accustomed to plants sited in 1,000 square metre plots. These would double up as their residence also. But the size of plots allotted at Bawana range between 100 square metres and 250 square metres.
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| It hasn't helped either that politicians like BJP leader Madan Lal Khurana have made statements promising that the guidelines on regularising units in non-conforming areas will be relaxed.
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| So several of those allotted plots at Bawana have shelved plans to shift to the industrial estate till some clarity emerges, presumably after the state elections, due in November.
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| The list of problems doesn't end here. The land rate at Bawana have shot up from Rs 4,200 to Rs 5,400 and is expected to touch Rs 13,000 by the next round of allotments.
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| Worse, after paying through their noses, factory owners do not get a title deed to the plot. This puts them in fix because banks refuse to advance credit for construction on property to which the borrowers do not have a claim.
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| The Delhi Finance Corporation (DFC) has neither the money nor the willingness to finance the construction of factories.
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| Stories of corruption among DFC officials abound, so much so that it is widely believed that if allotments are made on a freehold basis Bawana will be a flourishing industrial estate in a year's time.
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| Yet Bawana is caught in a curious chicken and egg situation. The estate has provision for wholesale markets, recreational areas and other utilities.
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| None of them has materialised so far because Bawana has only nine manufacturing plants at the moment. If and when the others come up, economies of scale will prompt the Delhi Jal Board to provide water connections.
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| The Delhi State Industrial Development Corporation (DSIDC) will then provide low-cost housing to labourers on a self-financing basis. But till the infrastructure comes up, businessmen are reluctant to shift their plants there.
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| They continue to cock an eye at the elections. Ved Pradhan, a brick kiln owner at Bawana, sums up the common perception about Bawana's future when he says that the elections could ultimately decide whether the industrial estate will ever flourish. |
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