In the fifth of a six-part series, Business Standard visits Coimbatore, often referred to as the Manchester of South India for its promising textile industry, to assess the impact of the note ban.
'If you want Aatma Nirbhar, your policies should favour self-reliance, but your policies do not help the idea.' 'How are we going to be self-reliant if you make things difficult for us?'
'Till now, we were under tremendous stress. The economy was not recovering, the financial cycle was not moving and the banks were not supporting.' 'With the government pumping in money to the banks and asking the NBFCs to give priority to the MSME sector, there will be a revival.'
'The babus in Delhi are not able to understand the pain industry is facing.'
At Prestige Polygon Towers in Chennai's Teynampet, hectic preparations are on for a mega global investors' meet under the aegis of Guidance Tamil Nadu (the state investment promotion agency) scheduled for January 2024. Asked about the key focus areas of the meet, the agency's managing director and chief executive officer, V Vishnu, said the state was betting big on electric mobility. This is no surprise, given that the state has signed electric vehicle (EV)-related memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with several companies in the recent past that may bring in investments worth around Rs 33,000 crore with the potential to create over 43,000 job opportunities.
Though he did not name anyone, the prime minister's attack appeared to be directed against Congress and its vice president Rahul Gandhi, who recently made two trips to Hyderabad Central University to join protests over the suicide of a Dalit scholar Rohit Vemula.
In less than two months since the announcement in March, the state has mobilised an armada of small and medium enterprises keen on making components for large equipment manufacturers.
'Nobody expected the slowdown to go for these many days. Unfortunately, it is an unbelievably bad slow down.'
'We are in the reverse gear and we are not there anywhere compared to the rest of the world'
Unless controlled and contained, given the untested belief that the north Indian labour support and follow the Hindutva kind of political ideology, there is a potential in terms of ideological clashes with their Dravidian brethren in the local neighbourhoods, and it all escalating into violence, especially during election time, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Thousands of police personnel have been deployed across the state to maintain law and order.
Brands such as Gap, Primark and C&A which source some of their garments from Tamil Nadu say they do regular audits to ensure their suppliers comply with their codes of conduct.
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