MAY 23: With the Tata-owned Svadeshi Mills in the red for two years now, allegedly due to a determinedly uninterested management, it's not just the 4,500-odd workers who are apprehensive about their future. Cotton merchants in the city are afraid of losing their entire lives' savings and businesses with the collapse of the mill.After the banks, they are its largest creditors, with the mill owing Rs 10 crore to around 20 merchants for cotton bought before September 1996, and in some cases since March 1996.All of them in turn having their creditors, 25,000 families are estimated to be caught in this economic vortex of poor realisation of dues. A loss of Rs 10 crore in the cotton world would worsen the situation of the weak textile industry in the city, they point out.Their condition is not helped by the management's attitude. They allege that the chairman of Svadeshi Mills, D J Madan, is hostile and abusive. On May 14, they say, they were abused and physically removed from his cabin and told to take their grievances elsewhere. "Did I buy cotton from you? Go and talk to the persons you sold cotton to,'' he is supposed to have told the traders.Madan also refused to talk to Express Newsline and banged his phone on this reporter.In the Cotton Exchange building at Cotton Green, the traders meet regularly to contemplate their future. While one has gone to court, the worst-hit among them has lost his entire business.Svadeshi Mills formed 90 per cent of the business for Narendra Agarwal of Anand Traders for the past 17 years and it today owes him a staggering Rs 4.3 crore. ``I kept on telling the management that I did not have the capability to give such a huge credit. My base was of only around Rs 40 to Rs 60 lakh,'' he says, ``but the managing director P J Mistry misled me into supplying him cotton in September 1996, claiming that the business that would accrue would then be used to clear my dues. He used the money to pay the bonuses. Nothing came my way.''Mistry, however, denies Agarwal's charge and says all overdue liabilities would be settled on ``receipt of appropriate funds''. This is little comfort for the hapless trader. Every call to his office is answered with a dejected ``Bahut kharab situation hai (I am in a very bad state).''Last September, Agarwal had supplied cotton worth Rs 1.5 crore to Svadeshi even as his earlier dues of Rs 3 crore remained uncleared. What is worse, his creditors include householders who have been giving their small savings to him at an interest. ``There are 175 families whose home-fires burn with the interest they earn on their savings. I cannot face them anymore. I told Mistry to pay me at least partly but it was like water off a duck's back,'' he laments.Similar is the case of at least five other traders who talked to Express Newsline. Agarwal was desperate enough to be identified but the others preferred anonymity. ``We supplied cotton trusting the name of the Tatas and believing they would not allow the mill to sink into loss,'' said one, ``but the management seems intent on making this a sick mill.'' These merchants believe, as does a large section of workers and officials, that the mill is not non-viable as it's made out to be.The spectre of imminent closure is giving the largest buyer of the Svadeshi product `Tata-Etacol interlining' - anxious moments.This interlining fabric is reported to have a monopoly hold in the market for shirt collars. And, speaking on anonymity, it's largest buyer says that the market for interlinings will now be open to all competitors. ``We are giving them a developed market,'' he complains.From 15 lakh metres a month, the mill's production has dropped to two lakh metres today. ``Shocking isn't it?'' he asks. A proposal by him to rejuvenate the mill with some funds was not accepted by the management.The management admits that the cotton merchants are owed Rs 10 crore but denies that Svadeshi has a monopoly in interlining fabrics. ``Our goal has always been to run the mill and not incapacitate it,'' it says.
