As revenues shrink and exporters move into other materials, workers in the ‘Peetal Nagri’ lead a tarnished life at the epicentre of the brass industry, Rahul Dev sketches the scenario.
When the very water you sip tastes tinny, you know you are in ‘Peetal Nagri’ (brass city) — as Moradabad is colloqually known, after its leading export. The precise but measured march of the palatial export houses on either side of Majola road as you enter this Uttar Pradesh city from Delhi, 167 kilometres away, leaves no room for misgivings about why Moradabad is the leading exporter of brass handicrafts in the country.
Yet, today, this city of about eight lakh people is fading in the same arena in which it once glowed. While its 250 listed exporters’ whinge about plummeting profits, the city’s 25,000 listed artisans, the very base of its industry, are starving. The reasons are simple: increase in the price of metal and fuel, vital in the production of brass (an alloy of copper and zinc), over the last five years, and, of course, the falling value of the dollar against the rupee.
Available at Rs 100 five years ago, a kilo of brass costs Rs 260 to Rs 280 a kilo in the international market. Exporters, never slow to spot an opportunity or the decline of one, began diversifying into glass, crystal, artificial diamonds, wood, electro-plated nickel silver (EPNS), iron and aluminium.
And so business marched on: in 2002-2003, handicrafts worth Rs 2,500 crore were exported, while in 2007-2008, annual exports went up to Rs 3,500 crore. Director, Small Scale Industries, YK Singh says while there hasn’t been much change in business activity in Moradabad, its competition and the cost of production has increased.
61-year-old Satpal, one of Moradabad’s foremost exporters, disagrees. The owner of Globe Metal Industries, which has an annual turnover of Rs 48 crore, Satpal fears that a business that was increasing annually by 10 to 15 percent until 2001, will witness a fall of 50 percent in 2008. For this, he blames the government. “Chinese products are much cheaper because they get subsidies, which we don’t.”
The skilled brass-specific artisans, however, don’t have the exporters’ ability to vary the product menu. Many are all but unemployed. Forced to go back to their soot-covered workshops for casting and soldering at reduced prices, they are near starvation. 26-year-old Raees has been working since he was 14. “I earned Rs 250 a day and had work 25 days in a month till four years ago. Today, I get work for only 10 days in a month and earn Rs 100 for 14 hours of labour,” he says as he poured red-hot molten brass into a mould with his bare hands. 65 percent of the city’s population are Muslims. And 90 percent of them are involved in brass production.
Locals believe that the art of brassware originated and developed from Moradabad during the Mughal period. It witnessed a boom in the early 19th century when the British took the art to foreign markets. Then, other artisans migrated from Varanasi, Lucknow, Agra and Jalesar and formed the current cluster of the brassware industry.
Everybody is talking about change and development in the city. The demand for malls, marts and departmental stores is increasing. Wave Cinema multiplex theatre has been up and running at the city’s posh Ram Ganga Vihar since August 2007, Parsvanath Mall on the Delhi Road is almost ready and Pacific Mall is in the process of coming up. “Earlier, people didn’t have a place where they could go out and enjoy or even take their guests for an outing in this city. Today they have an option and the response has been very good,” says Wave Cinema General Manager BS Bali.
MORADABAD, notorious for its proximity to the badlands of Uttar Pradesh, is also known for the sheer, unadulterated chaos of its traffic: the city is a trunk road for through traffic (from Delhi to Lucknow and Uttaranchal and back). It is also a large district town, providing connections between sugarcane growing areas and several sugar mills. The result: despite the bypass on NH 24, which has helped the north south traffic considerably, Moradabad’s main Kanth Road remains congested at any given time of the day, harrowing for those caught in its toils.
Where the city administration has been more successful, however, is in shedding the baggage of being communally sensitive. “Over the years, there has been a conscious understanding amongst the citizens that there is a need to maintain harmony. This is reflected in the fact that today, Moradabad has the finest and most active civil defence set up in UP called Civil Defence Core (charged with the responsibility of involving citizens whenever there is a threat to peace, external aggression or in calamity),” says Moradabad District Magistrate, Amit Kumar Ghosh.
If you’re a lover of old world charm, take a walk down the narrow lanes of peetal mandi, the brass market, and watch how each artisan sitting in his modest cubby hole is a powerhouse of an art on its last legs. The engraving, enamelling and polishing continues, despite the pall of darkness having descended on their future. Bulbs are switched on if the erratic power supply is kind, and work continues. But as you savour the famed mutton stew and sheermal sitting in the cosy confines of the 70-year-old Gulshan-e-Karim, an artisan’s words ring loud: “In five years, Moradabad will become the hub of artisan suicides.”
No comments:
Post a Comment