AMETHI, DEC 1: One look, and it's clear that this place needs Sonia Gandhi more than the tottering old party. After two decades of political patronage by the Gandhi family, Amethi shows what ill-planned populism can bring about. And nothing proves it better than the Jagdishpur Industrial Area.A plaque, yellowed in time, in front of what was meant to be a hi-tech security printing press, reads: ``Foundation of Jagdishpur Industrial Area was laid here by Sri Sanjay Gandhi.'' It was in March 1977. Two decades down the line, what remains of the industrial area is a cluster of dusty buildings, machines that stopped working long ago, closed doors, and memories of a promise.It's a story of industrialists flocking to make most of the successive governments' efforts to pamper the constituency of the Dynasty and leaving the skeletons behind once they made what was possible. After tax holidays, liberal loans and subsidies what is left is a long line of unemployed workers and closed factories.Take, for instance, the security press. It needs the collective memory of the villagers and officials to make out that it was a press meant to print lottery tickets, bank documents and postal material. The villagers don't remember when the press, now with shattered window panes and coated with dust, was closed. It was long, long ago, they say.A K Mishra, superintendent of the local chapter of Uttar Pradesh Small Industries Development Corporation (UPSIDC), says that industrial units had been set up on 217 out of the 313 plots in the industrial area. But, now only 80 are functioning and most of them are in the red. ``Most of the 80-odd units here are erratically running, closing down every now and then. Only eight or nine units have been making profits,'' says UPSIDC junior engineer P N Sonkar.The industrial area had an investment of Rs 10,000 crore and employed at least 25,000 workers. But today, around 75 per cent of them are unemployed and the area is an industrial graveyard. At least three dozen industrial units display sign-boards that read: ``This unit has been taken over by UP Finance Corporation (UPFC) for non-payment of dues.''``People thrived on heavy subsidies and long tax holidays offered by successive governments and closed down units after making a fast buck,'' says U K Pandey, an engineer who lost his job.The fully-computerised Amethi Textiles, the most modern textile unit in north India exposes the defects in policy-making for Amethi. The Rs 104-crore fully export-oriented Unit (EOU), Amethi Textiles, was set-up by Rajiv Gandhi's Doon School friend, Mahendra Bhate, with heavy funding from IDBI, IFCI and ICICI in 1989. It started producing both yarn and cloth in April 1992 making heavy profits. But the unit was sold by Bhate to Delhi-based industrialist Pradeep Jain in January 1995 and has been closed for the past six months. The 300 workers has not been paid for the past six months and the entire management has moved to Delhi.Financial institutions like UP Finance Corporation (UPFC), which offered up to 90 per cent finance in the initial stages for units in Amethi, have been wiser but only after incurring huge losses. They have amended conditions to offer only 50 per cent finance and that too after the applicant himself has already invested his share of the investment.
