(RE)STARTING TROUBLE

Dharmesh Kachiwala, 48, who runs a textile processing unit in Surat, is distraught as the national lockdown nears the one-month mark. Although the new guidelines from the Centre, announced on April 15, allow industrial units outside the COVID-19 ‘hotspots’ in Gujarat (such as in textile hub Surat) to resume operations from April 20, entrepreneurs like him aren’t taking any chances. “Surat’s textile trading market is closed, so where will we sell our products, even if we make them?” he asks. His firm, J.P. Kachiwala Textiles, supplies processed cloth to garment makers, who in turn export finished garments to larger firms such as British retailer Marks & Spencer. But even those businesses are now shut. “Once you start your plant, you have to keep operations going 24x7, else it becomes an expensive proposition,” he says. Having to pay salaries to 250 employees without any income is another burden.

Kachiwala and around 450 like him in the textile processing business in Surat are staring at a bleak future. So are the nearly 200,000 small and large powerloom units in Surat that supply cloth to the processing units. This is the case in almost all major industrial hubs in the country. The lockdown that began on March 25 may have slowed the spread of COVID-19, but has crippled India’s economy. Many analysts have predicted flat growth or even economic contraction in the first quarter of the current fiscal.

With this in mind, the Union ministry for home affairs (MHA) issued new guidelines on