[Reader-list] "Cawnpore" First Posting

Wed Jan 25 13:48:42 IST 2006

Hi all,

(Joining the late postings club) apologies!  

I am Maitrey Bajpai one of the Sarai fellows this year, honored to be amongst great minds. Who am I? Ok. No PhDs or degree's in sociology. A plain commerce graduate. Like most of us, I was a just an average film buff, until I took my fascination a step forward and decided to learn filmmaking, so I packed my bags and came to Mumbai. After spending most of my childhood in a boarding school, when I returned to my hometown of Cawnpore, I noticed that these big red-brick gothic structures (Textile Mills) which were once backbone of city's economy are on a verge of collapse. Orders for closure Mills had already passed. The immature filmmaker in me got exited and wanted to use this as a first film platform. Well it had all the ingredients. There was downfall of industrial economy; there was a worker and owner conflict, politics, government involvement, hugely affected population, question about employment. As I started analyzing it and developed a sensitive approach, I saw the closure had led to a complete change in the socio-economic ethos of the city. Also there was history, of Mills, of people working in it, of families who had suffered the burnt of closure, and history of my family, what?? . Yup! My family was involved in the trade of cloth since 1907. My father was the last generation to run the family business, but we, my brother and I chose to opt for other avenues. More than anything else there were emotions, sufferings; a sense of failure, a feeling of being incapable to change with the times...it was about death of an industrial city. A story that needed to be told.

Woof! I know it was pretty exhausting, but think of a young (I am turning 23 this Feb) wannabe filmmaker, it was pretty exiting. One of the questions that instantly pops up is "whats new about this" ... this has happened in Mumbai, Ahemdabad and a whole lot of other cities around the world. Thats right it seems to have happened everywhere, and why not, change is inevitable. To me primary difference between any other city and Cawnpore is that, it is about my own city. The other difference is that most of other cities have been able to catch up with the times, say for Mumbai, it did not have time even to think about the change, it just changed. May be Cawnpore would also catch up with 'globalization' but that answer waits in futures womb.  

My project for Sarai is titled "Cawnpore"

For those who dont have a clue what Cawnpore is, a brief history:
Kanhpur a simple insignificant village in central Uttar Pradesh, passed into British hands under the treaty of 1801 with Nawab of Oudh. Soon Kanhpur became an important military center for East India Co.. On March 24th 1803 Kanhpur along with its neighboring villages was declared a District. They pronounced it Cawnpore. With the establishment of Railways in 1859, city developed into an economic center with textile mills at its center. The process of development continued, by 1920s city had seven big mills. Due to this industrial development Cawnpore was termed as Manchester of the East. On 15th August 1947 India got its independence and so did the city of "Cawnpore". The city which was nurtured by the colonial rulers came to its end and changed to "Kanpur".

The question thats tickling your mind is why Cawnpore, why not simply Kanpur? Well I have two reasons for it (1) because thats the 'word' with which a cluster of villages was registered as a District and (2) thats the city which has died, Kanpur is still very much alive. 

THE MILL CLOSURE: 
Signs of decay were clear as early as in the '70s. In 1975, J.K. Manufacturers, a Singhania group company, was closed down. One of the reasons cited was the over involvement of trade unions. But as many as 1,500 workers lost their jobs. Increasing number of strikes and lowering profit margins gave an opportunity to the Mill owners to shift to other sectors, which had better returns.
After their closure, Government nationalized these sick units under National Textile Corporation (NTC) and British India Corporation (BIC) to save the poor from unemployment. In the days of socialist planning (before 1991), the mills were kept on costly life support machines by the government. But no money was invested to modernize them. Decrepit and hopelessly uncompetitive, the mills were killed off by the market forces unleashed by 90s liberalization drive.
Machines that stopped working cobwebbed doors of factories, depressing tales of unemployment and hunger and faces which forgot how to smile long ago. Once hailed by India's British colonial rulers as "Manchester of the East", this dilapidated city is nothing but shadow of its former industrial glory. Now they call it an "Industrial Graveyard". Families like mine along with mill workers failed the test of time; it was our lack of ability to switch gears when it was required the most. On the path of development, when an Economy shifts gears from Manufacturing oriented to Service sector there is a large chunk of population that is unable to change itself. The affect of closure of the mills is across all layers of society. Closure of textile mills not only left the working class of the city jobless, but also ruled out any possibility of emergence of lower middle class in the city.

In a city where machines roared day in and day out, chimneys never went cold, cycles filled the roads like anything, today there is calm. There is something uneasy about this calm. Nobody talks about the mills anymore. On the foot hold of changing times, probably, its time to talk about the mills. 

During the course of this research I wish to...
Study the history of 'Cawnpore', its existence, impact of the British Colonial rule and the development of cotton industry, evolution of the city and different economic scenarios that would help understand citys relationship with the Textile mills and people who were integral part of the change. Understanding the various socio-political reasons for the closure of textile industry in Cawnpore will help calculate the affect of damage. Interactions with workers and business families and an account their emotional experiences is the most important part of the research. An insight into my family history, which is in a way symbolic of the city, will help me draw parallels between city, mills and different periods in history. As this research is geared towards a documentary film, I hope this journey would help me weave various facets of my subject as I will try to comprehend history of Cawnpore city and its mills through the stories that its people have to tell.

Queries, suggestions and comments are welcome.

Peace,
Maitrey Bajpai  
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