Industrial Decay

The most revealing thing about Maharashtra’s industrial crisis may be that it takes the threat of factories leaving for the government to notice the roads leading to them. At Chakan, one of India’s – and not just Maharashtra’s - most important industrial clusters, at least 20 companies recently indicated they are prepared to shift operations because their workers could not commute, trucks cannot move and basic infrastructure cannot keep pace with industrial growth. As many as 35 companies have reportedly sought plots in Khandala, with 20 expressing a firm intention to relocate. The state’s response has been to promise that potholes will be filled and that the wider infrastructure deficiencies will be fixed within ten months.

Chakan is not merely a badly maintained industrial estate. It is a warning about the way Maharashtra has allowed its industrial infrastructure to deteriorate even as it celebrates itself as India’s industrial powerhouse. The irony is almost painful: the MIDC can build 45-metre and 70-metre internal roads, yet companies are forced to approach their factories through eight-metre and 12-metre roads controlled by a bewildering collection of agencies. The result has been traffic jams, potholes, inadequate parking, waste-management problems and trucks competing with commuters for the same inadequate road space.

Chakan should not be treated as an isolated embarrassment. Similar complaints about roads, congestion, utilities, transport links and civic infrastructure have surfaced across Maharashtra’s major industrial belts. Whether in Pune’s wider industrial corridor, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Nashik, Aurangabad, Nagpur or other established MIDC clusters, the underlying problem in Maharashtra is increasingly familiar: industry is being asked to operate at twenty-first-century speeds on infrastructure governed by twentieth-century institutional arrangements.

Industries Minister Uday Samant’s visit and the high-level committee and the promise of time-bound repairs are minimum assurances. But Maharashtra should be wary of congratulating itself for responding to a crisis that should never have reached this point.

The minister also sought to play down the relocation threat, saying that migration did not come up in his meeting with industrialists. Whether every company eventually leaves Chakan is almost beside the point. The fact that established businesses are seriously examining alternatives because basic infrastructure has become a constraint is itself an indictment.

Maharashtra cannot simultaneously demand investment, advertise itself as an industrial destination and treat the infrastructure supporting that investment as an afterthought. Investors, too, have choices and care about the cost and reliability of getting from factory to customer.

If the state wants to remain an industrial powerhouse, it must stop measuring success by the number of factories it attracts and start measuring it by how efficiently those factories can function. Chakan is the warning. The potholes are merely the most visible part of it.