crime, corruption galore, carpet takes a backseat

Forty-year-old Zafar is hoping against hope. In Pirkhapur lane of Bhadohi town, he is, under the blazing sun, trying to sell vegetables with no prospective buyers around. Not too long back, his hands weaved magic as he was known as a master carpet weaver.
His is, though, not an isolated case. With the carpet business witnessing a slump in Bhadohi, many of the expert weavers are compelled to take to other occupations. While some are selling vegetables, others are pulling rickshaw and working as lobourers.
Government officials claim that 80 per cent of carpets exported from India originated from this belt. The growth of Indian carpet industry has been quite impressive in recent years as exports from this country account for the 19 per cent of the global trade.
However, crime, stiff global competition and government’s apathy has over the years, marred the entire business here. More than 100 leading exporters, in the recent past, shifted their bases to other places, including Noida and Gurgaon, for security reasons. They are now procuring carpets being manufactured in Panipat.
According to police sources, an Exporter Sachin Khanna was abducted in 2003, while another exporter Ved Prakash Jaiswal and six of his family members were butchered by criminals the same year. In 2002, an exporter Gauri Shankar Gupta and his wife were killed.
In fact, the flourishing trade opened up a new vista for criminals some 15 years back which is now forcing the exporters here to wind up their business and shift to safer places. An exporter, Zahir, said, “You can not do much when goons of the local politicians go on killing people.”
The trade is said to have started when Sheikh Madrullah, Mughal Emperor Akbar’s master weaver, along with other Persian weavers, came to this region in 1790. They were attacked by robbers near Mirzapur and rescued by local villagers. An obliged Madrullah decided to stay back in Mirzapur and pass his skills on to the locals, beginning a trade whose annual turnover today runs into crores of ruppes.
But today Bhadohi presents a picture of complete neglect. The number of people involved in the industry has gone down considerably. The annual turnover has also gone down in crores. Hazi Shaukat Ali Ansari, president of the All India Carpet Manufacturers’ Association, attributed the current state of affairs to lack of any kind of infrastructure in the town. Ansari, who is a Congress nominee for the Mirzapur-Bhadohi by-election, said, “The government has stopped the practice of providing cash incentive, quotas and import license to us which has taken its toll.”
Ramesh Kumar, a weaver and a resident of Buxar district in Bihar, said that global competition was another factor to blame for the current situation. According to him, Persian carpets, which are costly and generate employment to a greater number of people, are not being manufactured here as they are not in demand anymore in the international markets. He also rued lack of infrastructure saying there had not been any industry in Bhadohi during the past 15 years.