In my long years of studying and practicing economics, I must have read at least 200 articles and books on the MSMEs. In each work, the idea presented of the MSMEs is a small unit, run by an entrepreneur with few workers and low mechanization and is taken to be a self-contained unit which procures raw materials and produces for the market. Policies have been formulated upon such erroneous assumptions, reinforcing the errors around the MSMEs. Indian industries rests heavily upon the MSMEs, most often the traditional ones, such as textiles, brass, glass, gems and jewelry and food processing. In none of the above industries, we have small self-contained units producing for an impersonal market; instead, each of the units is a branch of specialization which together form a huge supply chain for an agent or a contractor who is at the peak of this pyramid, negotiating with the market forces. This is the picture of the Moradabad brass industry in which numerous units can be considered as shops of a giant production system.

In the old part of Moradabad, typically that lies on the Rampur Road, the city divides and subdivides into narrow alleys with concrete houses that hosts a “factory” each on the ground floor with the upper floors being used as residential areas. Each of these “factories” specializes in one or more processes, namely casting, moulding, forming, stamping, extrusions, etching, wire drawing, polishing, finishing, painting, and coating and of course metal pasting. These units may be considered as being “shops” of a giant factory whose turnover is Rs 8000 – Rs 9000 crores. Such an industry is not small scale. At Rs 1000 per kg, Moradabad produces about 8000 to 9000 tonnes of brass annually.

Most of the work, even before the age of electricity in India was done by hand operated machines. Levers, wheels, axles albeit operated by hand were cleverly designed to produce high turn speeds producing therefore moulded products of impeccable quality. Clever and patient hands did the etching on heated metals. There was always a profuse use of dies for impressing designs on metals. Moradabad was named after Prince Murad, a son of Shah Jahan, also a contender for the Mughal throne and eventually slain by Aurangzeb in the war of succession. The brass units are overwhelmingly located along the Prince road, the road through which drove Prince Murad.

The health of this industry depends on the market; brass being a luxury and leisure item used mainly for decoration and for sacred rituals, domestic markets will always remain too small. Brass has always been and will forever remain, a global item depending on exports. The basic material, copper, and zinc, is found widely across the world and is also easily imported, but the organization of skilled labour willing to work seems to be the crucially decisive factor. Moradabad must count on its fortunes that it has no dearth of skilled workers willing to work in factories.

Given the dependence on exports and the shrinking demand for brass across the world, Moradabad brass industry is struggling, not with issues of scaling up but with issues of excess capacities. Mechanization is not about scaling up nor about replacing labour, because manual skills as needed to operate machines as well; it is about the need to avoid the heat of metal working and to reduce the exposure of workers to metal gases and emissions. The only problem with mechanization is the lack of space in factories; hence the metal working and finishing centres. This means that there is likely to be a lot of movement of workers across the premises from one house to another, namely where the machines are kept.

The principal materials for brass are copper and zinc. India had comfortable reserves in but these, especially of copper has depleted fast leaving the country deficit in both. Copper is imported today and whatever zinc is produced is diverted to the ever-growing stainless-steel industry. Copper too largely goes to the power sector. Whatever comes to the brass industry are the leftovers, often at a high price. Dependence on scrap has increased, which is also imported. Moradabad NGOs have developed a raw material bank to secure assured supplies of the material.

To be able to use the machines to full capacity, and to utilize skilled labour more fully, brass workers are graduating to working with aluminum and steel, coating these with gold coloured lacquer to make these appear as brass. This has changed the hues of the industry literally, expanded its scope of products. If there is a scope for expansion and hence mechanization, then it is in the metals other than brass.

Indian government has banned imports from China and it’s Made in India mission purports to build all machines in India. The Indian made machines, like the swadeshi or yore are poor and expensive; industries are suffering everywhere due to a near total ban on Chinese machinery. But the states run by the BJP governments merrily import Chinese machines; UP is no exception. Chinese machines are imported through Ghaziabad and Moradabad units import from Ghaziabad, both being in UP. Ludhiana, in Punjab the traditional hub of machinery lies vacated as there are no buyers of indigenous machinery in the country; to concentrate industries in BJP led states, only BJP ruled states are allowed imports from China; machinery, scrap, commodities. The totally unintelligent opposition has failed to see this glaring anomaly.

There was a report in Wire as to how a politics of Hindutva and banning Muslims from the economy has hurt Mordabad. Yes, it did as the Dalits were eager to takeover the jobs from the Muslim workers in the brass factories. Unfortunately, even the diehard Hindutvawadis realized that the Muslims who have been on the job for generations have genetically coded abilities not to be undone through mean politics of envy. The matter seems to rest now, the peaceful coexistence of the boisterous kanwars and the strutting Muharram processions perhaps vindicate the point.

Under the scheme of one district one cluster, Moradabad has been marked out for brass. Brass has lost its sheen, but the skills now rally behind various other kinds of metals. The cluster must be protected to protect skills, accumulated over centuries across generations, deposited in the DNA codes and so easily translated into more sophisticated metal working.