THE SORRY STATE OF HINDUSTAN PAPER CORPORATION LIMITED (HPCL)

HINDUSTAN PAPER CORPORATION LIMITED

The current and ex-employees of this organization take pride in the fact that it is one of the "Miniratna Category-I" public sector undertaking (PSU) in India. By definition, it means a firm that "has made profits continuously for the last three years or earned a net profit of Rs. 30 crore or more in one of the three years". 

The reason for blogging about this is because my father has been an employee of this organization for more than 30 years now and he along with almost 2000 current employees are in deep-deep trouble. So, the reason which got me to get back to this blog and post something here after almost a year, is that Hindustan Paper Corporation (HPCL) is in the middle of a serious crisis where a lot of lives are at stake. The two paper mills - Nagaon Paper Mill and Cachar Paper Mill are not operational and employees are not getting their salaries. Cachar Paper Mill was last operational in October whilst Nagaon Paper Mill is shutdown since February. All employees have been crying for their salaries for months as they struggle to run their households, pay their EMIs, pay their children's education fees, get medical assistance and thousands of other basic tasks. Money drives every basic thing in the world that we currently live in. So now that we have established the fact, that not getting salary regularly is a huge problem for every middle-class man, we can talk about the plight of the industry.

1.     The mills are not operational. The reason being, there is no money to pay the vendors and bring in the raw-material. The situation arose because of mismanagement/corruption at top and mid-level and CBI investigations are on. This in turn led to losses and drying up of the reserve funds and eventually the mill did not have any money to pay the dues of the vendors and hence they stopped supplying the raw-materials, which ultimately meant ZERO production.

2.     When the downfall started, and company started incurring intermittent losses, employees stopped getting the extra-benefits of a typical PSU and everybody thought it’s just normal cost-cutting that happens everywhere. The maintenance activities started happening less regularly, occasional late salary disbursements, renovations stopped and many similar things followed.

3.     Then slowly there came a time, when the mills had to wait for the raw-materials to arrive, run for a month or two, produce the paper and then wait for it to get sold off in the market and use that money for further purchase of raw-materials. Ultimately, when the mills could no longer sustain and couldn't bear its own cost of running with the sales it was making, the mills stopped and couldn't pay the salary dues of its employees.

4.     Currently, around 2000 employees have not received their salaries for the past 7 months and the employees are asking for a revival package from the Government to make the mills operational and bring it to a profitable position.

5.     The families of these employees are facing a serious crisis as they are struggling to run their households without any salary. Children of most of the employees are studying, somebody has a house loan on his/her name, somebody bought a car on loan, and somebody has dependent parents.

6.     Then the location of these mills, Panchgram and Jagiroad are still very remote and the livelihood of the people living here is through these paper mills. Some work as contractors, some as temporary labour, some are shopkeepers, fruit & vegetable vendors, milkmen, gardeners, servants are also struggling. The whole economy of these two areas is still dependent in a huge way on these two mills and its employees.

There have been protests going on, by the labour-union, by the employees, by the "children of HPC" but I feel these protests will die out over time as till now their voices have not fallen into the ears of neither the "Heavy Industry Ministry", not the central government. All we have received till now is an occasional nod by the Ministers saying that we will definitely revive the two mills. As I went through the news related to this issue over the past one year, I came to know that a revival strategy is being prepared to not just make the mills operational but profitable in a short-period of time, the revival package is under a vetting process, Assam state government is talking with the Center. The way things are moving, it could take another 6-7 months before anything substantial happens. This could completely break-down a lot of employees and their families. We need to act now and hence I thought of listing down a few reasons as to what may have gone wrong:

1.     There are multiple agendas. A section of the organization (management) is asking for a revival package from the government (1350 crores to be somewhere near precise, although last year September the state government issued a statement with a figure of 800 crores). Then there is a section who is protesting for the employee salaries to be disbursed immediately which has been due for months now. Then, there are people who are local residents of Jagiroad and Panchgram area who have been affected indirectly as their source of income is through the living expenditures of the employees of HPCL. So, all in all the raised voices of these separate sections are to some extent cancelling out echoes of each other thus reducing the overall impact of the protests.

2.     There is weak/less significant leadership in terms of bringing this protest in the eye of the public. For any protest to be successful, it has to come into the eyes of the public. With, coverage only on the local newspapers and news channels, hardly anybody has noticed the current fate of the HPCL. This has been the story of North-East India for the past 70 years, never really getting the attention of Mainland India or so to say, the Parliament located at heart of our nation's capital. There is a need to make this issue a national one, to get every concerned minister's undivided attention. Let us get Arnab Goswami to conduct a debate on his channel Republic TV, at least let us try to get this issue on one of the National level TV Channels.

3.     God helps only those who help themselves- Let us stage a demonstration where we do not just sit on a strike and do nothing, but actually do something about our own situation. Let us unite every one, bring in as much bamboo as we can and start the production even if it is on a very minute scale. I don't even know if it is possible or not, only my dad and his colleagues know whether it is feasible or not. Let us put in the hard-work, demonstrate the strength of the HPCL family to everyone, may be it will grab the attention of the nation that could give a strong push to our agenda. While people try to run the mill, others can contribute by cleaning the residential colonies which have undergone tremendous damage due to lack of funds.

4.     Somebody needs to find a source directly to either Our Chief Minister, respected Sri Sarbananda Sonowal, or our Heavy Industry Ministers Sri Anant G Geete & Sri Babul Supriyo (who might be a good friend of Abhijeet Bhattacharya, Zubin Garg or may be Shaan). We need people who can skip the regular process and get in touch directly with these people of influence.

5.     Let’s resolve internal conflicts and internal politics. As long as we are wasting our energy in internal politics or looking for personal gains, nobody is going to benefit out of it. A united front, a united voice, a united display of anger and disappointment is the need of the hour.

I want to use this platform to reach out to everybody and tell them the struggle that these 2000 individuals and their families are currently undergoing and my parents are one of them. I take great pride in being part of the HPCL family, which took care of my childhood, enabled my father to take care of my college education and played a huge part in making me the man I am today and I know a lot of my school-mates share the same feeling. I cannot and will not just sit back and watch it die. I want to reach out to my fellow school-mates to join in, every present and past member of the HPCL family (may not even be impacted at all by this), every single person who thinks that everybody should get what’s rightfully theirs. Let us join hands, move the Government to get their undivided attention, and help out these 2000 odd families along with preserving our glorious past.