Agra | Kolkata: Off the dusty road, behind the glass front of a rather ordinary building, hundreds of workers are bent over pieces of brown leather. They are cutting them into 22 different shapes that make a Bugatti shoe. Some are crimping the slices; others are skiving them; a few are stitching insoles and sliding socks. As the summer heat beats down on the city, they are preparing the German brand’s winter collection. Brown boots with metal lace holes are getting lined up to be paired and placed in boxes that read Bugatti: We Are Europe.
But this is Dawar Footwear Industries at Sikandra in Agra. One of the leather hubs of the country, Agra exported footwear worth Rs 4,000 crore in 2015-16. Puran Dawar, chairman of Dawar Footwear Industries that produces shoes for Bugatti, Benetton and Lumberjack, among others, has been a hassled man for a week now, since the news broke about the Environment Ministry’s notification restricting the sale of cattle for slaughter in animal markets.
“This is fatal for the leather industry,” says Dawar, who is also regional chairman (north) of the Council for Leather Exports (CLE). “Before taking such a decision, there should have been consultations with the stakeholders. They can regulate slaughtering, they shouldn’t ban it.”
His company, he claims, makes 1.2 million pairs of shoes every year, using about 3.5 million square feet of leather. It employs 1,500 workers, most of them Jatavs and some Muslims, and has a turnover of Rs 150 crore. Animals are primarily killed for meat, hide is only a byproduct of that, he says. “If slaughter is stopped, where will we get our raw material from? We want the entire notification rolled back.”
Sole Searching
Agra’s leather footwear exporters are buffing summer models and gearing for the trade show, Expo Riva Schuh, at Riva del Garda in Italy — but they are worried. “What price shall we quote there when we don’t know how we will get leather — and at what price?” asks Dawar, who claims that tanneries have already increased the price of leather by 10%. What stumps Dawar and other leather exporters like Kulbir Singh of Roger Industries, Agra, and Rajiv Bhatia of D2 International, Kolkata, is that the sector is a focus area under the Make in India programme. An industry, hit by recession in the West, was hoping for things to turn around this year — until it was blindsided by the May 23 notification.
Bhatia has three manufacturing units — two at the Calcutta Leather Complex and one in the Kasba Industrial Zone — supplying finished products like bags, wallets and shoes to brands like Armani, Tommy Hilfiger and Nautica. “We were so encouraged by the Make in India campaign that we took loans and invested heavily in infrastructure. Now, this has come as a body blow for us. Our clients are calling us, worried,” says Bhatia. Meanwhile Zia Nafis, owner of Nafis Tannery Industry, Kolkata, is ruing the Rs 15 crore loan he took to install machines from Italy and China. There are 385 tanneries in the Calcutta Leather Complex and 750 leather goods-making units spread across the city.
Dawar, Singh, Bhatia and Nafis are just four faces of the $17.85 billion leather industry that employs around three million people. In the heart of the cow belt of Uttar Pradesh, exporters keep business separate from religion. “Instead of banning cow slaughter, restrict it to cows that are beyond a certain age and are of little use to the farmer,” says Dawar. As he spreads a pink stretch of cow leather on the table, he adds that men’s shoes are mostly made of cow hide and women’s of goat hide.
The meat processing industry will be happy if buffalo is removed from the definition of cattle, as the bulk of its exports is buffalo meat — in 2016, India exported 13,14,158 tonnes of buffalo meat products worth Rs 26,681.56 crore. But the leather industry needs cow leather. The new rules say that even cattle that have died of natural causes cannot be flayed or sold for leather. The BJP’s national spokesperson, GVL Narasimha Rao, told that “there are no restrictions on the sale of cattle for slaughter outside livestock markets”.
“The guidelines were issued in the wake of the Supreme Court’s observations on animal markets and cattle smuggling. The government has received representations from some groups and is examining the same to ward off unintended effects, if any. Those saying government has imposed restrictions on slaughter and food habits are indulging in motivated propaganda.”
Livestock vs Livelihood
If the notification is intended to stop the cross-border smuggling of cattle, then it is a law-and-order issue that has to be tackled at that level, says Fauzan Alavi, spokesperson of the All India Meat and Livestock Exporters Association (AIMLEA). Making the slaughter of cattle almost impossible is not the solution, he adds. Illegal slaughtering is already rampant. A near-ban will push it underground and make it even more difficult to regulate.
DB Sabharwal, secretary general, AIMLEA, says “this notification will bring our business to a standstill. Export of buff meat will collapse”. He says if 2,500 mandis have to be developed according to the specifications in the notification, each will cost about Rs 50 crore. And if no animal market can be organised within 25 km of any state border, the immediate threat is to the Gazipur mandi near the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border. There are hints that the Environment Ministry might adding that “this is the only effect of the notification”. “Every state has its own legislation or no legislation (with regard to slaughter of cattle). You have provision in the Constitution Article 48 (Directive Principles) which says that certain category of animals have to be protected,” he said.
According to the Kesavananda Bharati judgment, fundamental rights and directive principles have to be balanced, reminds Arvind Datar, senior advocate, adding that the notification is “plainly illegal”. “It will be set aside in a matter of minutes. It goes against the butcher’s right to carry on business, it goes against one’s freedom to eat meat. The notification will have a huge collateral damage. Has the government studied the impact it will have on the meat processing and leather industries? It is also unnecessarily irritating the minorities.”
Away from Agra and Kolkata, the repercussions are being felt in the cattle market of Pollachi in Tamil Nadu and the village of Peruvembu in Kerala, where people traditionally make percussion instruments. S Selvaraj, secretary of the Tamil Nadu Mattu Vyaparigal Matrum Thozhilalargal Pathugappu Nala Sangam (an organisation of cattle traders and workers), says the cattle market in Pollachi, held every Tuesday and Thursday, bore the brunt of the notification. While 3,000 cattle are sold over two days, last Tuesday saw the sale of only 60-70 cattle. Things improved on Thursday, a day after the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court stayed the Central notification for four weeks, when it saw the trade of 500 cattle.
“Even so, the Pollachi market suffered a loss of Rs 5 crore in a week. And the situation was more or less similar in over 150 cattle markets in Tamil Nadu,” he said, over the phone from Coimbatore. “The state government has to step in and ensure that the sale of cattle can take place like before. This is in the interest of the farmer. A cow or a buffalo that is not giving milk is a burden on farmers. You can’t ask one farmer to buy cattle that is of no use to another farmer. They sell non-milch cattle and use the money to buy new animals. That cycle will be disrupted. The farmers will be the most affected.”
In the small village of Peruvamba in Kerala, it is not beef that is of the greatest concern as it is in the rest of the state. This is where percussion instruments like the chenda, the maddalam, the mridangam and the edakka, indispensable in temples and temple festivals and as accompaniments, are made. The community of artisans needs the hide of cows and bulls to make the mridangam, the hide of cows and oxen to make the chenda, and the guts of cattle for edakka. “If this notification stays, then the temples of Kerala will fall silent,” says N Parameswaran, president of the Thukal Vadyopakarana Nirmana Sanghom. “Our village will be jobless.” They source the skins from nearby slaughterhouses, dry them in the village and turn them into exquisite percussion instruments.
Option B
Meanwhile, those in the leather industry are looking at options. Around 20 tanners from Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh have decided to relocate their business to Kolkata because of its “favourable environment”. A group of them met Amit Mitra, Bengal’s minister for finance, commerce and industry, and proposed to relocate their factories. Says Tarbez Alam, a tanner from Kanpur: “The future of leather industry looks doomed with this notification. We have our units in Kanpur. But after Yogi Adityanath assumed office, restrictions have been imposed on the industry. So, a group of tanners thought of venturing out of Kanpur and relocating to Kolkata. We have a major market of international export. We met the industry minister in Bengal and committed to set up at least 20 new units there. Now, we are caught in an undesirable situation.”
According to the plan, in the first phase, 20 units will be shifted to Kolkata with a proposed investment of Rs 1,000 crore and employment for around 6,000 people. Imran Ahmed Khan, secretary, Calcutta Leather Complex Tanner’s Association, says, “We are flooded with calls from other states, asking us about Bengal’s stand.” In Agra, Gopal Gupta, director of Gupta HC Overseas, refuses to buckle down: “The industry will go on. If we don’t get cow leather in the country, we will import it from Egypt, Brazil, Pakistan. Cows are everywhere.”
His company has a turnover of about Rs 300 crore and makes 1.8 million pairs of footwear a year. Gupta has lined up a pair of golden-coloured shoes with white soles, made with cow leather, and a pair of strappy heels in burnt orange, made with buffalo skin, to be showcased at the Italian fair. If he gets the nod for these models and if the notification stays, Gupta might have to source the leather from Pakistan. That may not be the kind of ending that Make in India wants.
Source: Economic Times
