Only days after The Indian People’s Party (BJP) confirmed its victory in the 2019 general election in India, and its leader, Narendra Modi, began his second term as the country’s prime minister, reports have emerged from the north of the country questioning the ability of the tanning cluster in Kanpur to survive. A temporary closure, imposed on Kanpur’s 260 tanneries towards the end of 2018 (ostensibly to lower pollution levels in the River Ganges) now looks likely to become permanent. The restrictions came into force in mid-December at the instructions of Mr Modi’s BJP colleagues, who run the state government in Uttar Pradesh. They said they wanted to lower pollution levels in the sacred river in time for ritual bathing at Allahabad during this year’s Ardh Kumbh Mela religious festival. But the festival ended in March and the tanneries have not yet received permission to start production again. Speculation is rife that the BJP’s renewed political strength, following its general election win in May, could mean they never will. “Unfortunately this news is true,” Taj Alam, managing director of Unnao-based tannery Kings International. He explained that the much smaller clusters at Unnao and Bantha, which are on the opposite bank of the Ganges from Kanpur, are being allowed to continue production for now. But Mr Alam is also the president of the Leather Industry Association of Uttar Pradesh and said the BJP government, at national and at state level, seems to him to be determined to keep the Kanpur cluster closed. “It’s very sad,” he added. “All Kanpur tanneries are undergoing financial hardship because the closure has now lasted six months. Hundreds of thousands of workers along the supply chain have now been made unemployed and the value-added finished product sector is being badly impacted too because they cannot get finished leather.” Reuters and other media outlets have linked the prominence of the BJP with an increase in clashes, many of them violent, between people trading cattle, meat and hides and Hindu nationalists, who venerate cows. BJP politician and Hindu priest Yogi Adityanath became chief minister of Uttar Pradesh just over two years ago. Tanners in and around Kanpur soon spoke of their fear that moves against the meat industry and its by-products were likely to follow and immediate actions that the state government took included a crackdown on slaughterhouses and meat outlets.
Source – APLF.
