End to Gujjar crisis no relief for Agra carpets





Vishal Sharma / New Delhi/ Agra



With the opening of the Agra-Mumbai highway following the ceasefire in the Gujjar crisis in Rajasthan, the leather footwear and accessories industry of Agra can heave a sigh of relief.
Trucks of raw material have finally begun pouring into the city, after almost a week, carrying quality leather from Chennai just in time to prevent a leather crisis in the town.

However, the marble handicraft and carpet manufacturers of the town are still faced with uncertainty with the supply routes for marble and dyed wool from Rajasthan remaining blocked and the local stocks of raw material depleting fast.
According to industry sources, the entire supply of marble in Agra for handicrafts and souvenirs came from Makrana and its nearby mines in Rajasthan.
Owing to the precarious situation in Rajasthan over the Gujjar reservation issue, the supply of fresh stone had come to an abrupt halt with no indications about the possible resumption of supplies in near future, resulting in a crisis of fresh stone in the town.
Apart from marble, other soft stones were also required in the manufacture of various handicraft articles and the supply of these stones too, had stopped.
The carpet industry of Agra, which solely depends of dyed wool from Rajasthan has come to a virtual standstill owing to the blockade of the Agra-Jaipur highway, resulting in a large number of delayed and cancelled overseas orders.
The crisis was expected to grow stronger as the reservation issue dragged on without a solution in sight.
A conservative estimate pegged the industry losses at Rs 5-6 crore a day solely due to the Agra-Jaipur highway blockade, while the losses were higher during the past week, when the town was virtually cut off from both Agra-Jaipur and Agra-Mumbai highways shutting down the supply routes to Gujarat, Mumbai and the southern states.
Some traffic was routed through Etawah, but the number of transport operators to choose this lengthy route costing about Rs 4,000 extra, was too small to have made any difference in the crisis.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Woman torched to death by inlaws on International Women's Day in India

AGRA.               It could serve as a well-placed slap in the face of the the groups of so-called women's rights activists who all too recently celebrated International Women’s Day, fervently praising the contribution made by women to the society and vowing to prevent violence against the feminine gender comfortably ensconced in luxurious clubs and hotels.    While the world was busy celebrating women’s day, a young girl was murdered in cold-blood, torched to death by her in-laws in Kayamganj town of Farrukhabad district of Uttar Pradesh, alongwith a 6-month fetus inside her, just three years after marriage.    Two weeks have passed since the grisly murder but the local police appears to be in no hurry to catch the absconding in-laws who doused the girl in kerosene and left her to burn and die on the street, making good their escape while the locals awaited for the police to arrive. Meanwhile, the victim’s mother Archana Sharma has suffered from a strok
Read more

My views on Libya, India and the permanent SC seat

Image
On Wednesday, the British government 'de-recognized' the Gaddafi government and decided that it was in the interest of democracy to recognize the Libyan rebels as the only legal representative of the Libyan people. Immediately after that, the British Police entered the Libyan embassy in London and forced the remaining Libyan diplomats out of UK. France has already been parachuting modern weaponry, arms and ammunition to the Libyan rebel strongholds and both France and the United States have recognized the rebels as the legal Libyan representative power. While I am not a fan of Gaddafi or his regime in any way or form but I am equally disappointed in NATO's tactics and the double standards being played by the western powers in the Arab world. Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein had been two sore patches in the otherwise near-sweeping 'western conquest' of the Arab world and its oil. Only now, when a group of disenchanted Libyans, trained and provided for by wes
Read more

Agra unit to turn waste to wood

Image
Vishal Sharma / Agra December 29, 2008, 0:00 IST Govardhan Udyog plans to use cowdung to produce particle board. Faced with the task of developing environment-friendly technology for industry due to guidelines issued by the Supreme Court, entrepreneurs in Agra are realising the cost-effective potential of such technologies and innovations. Govardhan Udyog is one such unit which plans to use a non-conventional raw material, cowdung, to produce particle board and pharmaceutical products. The unit was inaugurated this week on the Agra-Delhi national highway near the Mathura refinery, about 55 km from Agra. Company sources said the basic raw material used in the manufacture of particle board will be cow dung. This will perhaps make it the first particle board manufacturing facility using cowdung as the raw material. Govardhan Udyog Managing Director SK Mittal said particle boards were emerging as a viable alternative in designing office furniture and automation products in the country as c
Read more