Violence over the protest on Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in various areas of Delhi, since last 4 days, has impacted the local apparel trade in a big way.
The negative impact on garment manufacturing business, owing to violence, is expected to continue for a long time as the violence-affected areas do have a lot of migratory workforce that belongs to a specific community.
Here it is important to note that 20 people have died so far, and 189 people have been injured in the violence. Curfew has been imposed in Jaffrabad and Section 144 (prohibiting the assembly of four or more people in an area) has also been imposed in the affected areas.
Welcome, Seelampur, Jafrabad and allied areas are the leading manufacturing hubs for unorganised domestic market. While denim and leather jackets are the core products for these areas, other garments are also produced here. Notably, there are thousands of garment manufacturers in these areas who work independently and also do sub-contracting (job work) for local brands of unorganised market.
Asia’s largest wholesale garment market Gandhi Nagar, which is very close to these areas, sources many stitching and allied operations from thousands of job workers of these areas.
No specific data is available regarding these areas as majority of business here takes place in an unorganised way, but garment business provides direct jobs to around half a million people.
As curfew is imposed in these areas, it will take at least a few more days for life to return to normalcy.
Narinder Singh Chawla of A.G. Apparels, Gobind Garh, Tank Road (Karol Bagh) supplies garments across India and he has been receiving calls from his customers about the situation and deliveries. Narinder, who fears labour shortage, said “Most of the workers in these areas belong to other states and after the violence, there are enough chances that they might go back for few days. This will certainly lead to a delay in production eventually impacting the entire supply chain.”
It was hard to talk to people about their business as most of them were scared and few of them have been badly impacted. Haji Irshad Ali, having operations at Kabootar Market at Welcome area, told Apparel Resources, “As of now we are not thinking about business, but for sure this sad incident will have long-term negative impact on the business of this area as we have faced both financial and mental losses. I can’t say when and how our business will be back to normalcy.”
