It took eastern Assam’s Namrup almost 500 years to transform from ‘Kalapani’, or death valley, to an industrial town. The place had earned the Kalapani tag because it was where the medieval Ahom rulers banished criminals and rebels to.
Namrup took more than 60 years to honour Mohini Nath Phukan, the man who prevented the town from relapsing into the wilderness after the Chinese attack in 1962, by installing his statue in front of the Namrup Fertiliser Complex on Saturday.
Mr. Phukan, who quit as a civil service officer to manage the fertiliser factory – India’s first gas-based one – had dissuaded former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who wanted it to be shifted to West Bengal in the backdrop of the Chinese aggression.
“The Chinese soldiers had in 1962 almost reached Assam. The former PM was reluctant to invest in the fertiliser plant as he feared it could be targeted if there were more conflicts. But Mr. Phukan had to fight more battles than the one with Mr. Nehru,” Tileswar Bora, general secretary of the Namrup Fertiliser Employees’ Union, told The Hindu from the town about 450 km east of Guwahati.
Mr. Bora said the people of the town, apart from the employees, crowd-funded the statue. “It took us many years, but as they say, it is better late than never,” he added.
‘Club of death’
Work for the plant began in 1960 and about 50 residential quarters had been built before the 1962 year. Brought under Fertiliser Corporation of India (FCI), work resumed in 1963 but the Centre had in the following year said the land was not hard enough to withstand the weight of a plant that would produce 200 metric tonnes of ammonia and 167 MT of urea per day besides other chemical products.
Mr. Phukan fought again and had another spot identified where the supply of natural gas from oilfields in neighbouring Naharkatiya and Duliajan, and water from the Dilli river was ensured. He also convinced some villagers to give their farmlands.
Commissioned in 1968, the British technology-backed Namrup-I turned out to be FCI’s most viable of three plants – the others were Dadri in Jharkhand and Nangal in Punjab – that produced the cheapest fertilisers. This spurred the government to start Namrup-II in 1972 with Italian technology.
The FCI set up seven new fertiliser plants across India, including Haldia in West Bengal, soon after Namrup-II was commissioned in 1976 to produce 600 MT of urea daily. In 1978, the Janata Party government split FCI into four separate companies. Namrup was clubbed with the Haldia, Durgapur and Barauni plants under Hindustan Fertiliser Corporation Limited (HFCL).
But while production and profitability of Namrup increased, the Durgapur and Barauni ran into losses while the ₹300 crore Haldia project had to be abandoned after 14 years of uncertainty. “We were in the club of death,” Mr. Bora said.
Namrup, nevertheless, continued to be on an expansion mode with the third and a much larger unit being commissioned in 1987. But the poor performance of the other plants in West Bengal and Bihar impacted Namrup. In 1992, HFCL was declared a sick company and referred to the Board of Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR); maintenance suffered and salaries remained frozen as in 1987.
The BIFR’s suggestion saw the government sanction ₹350 crore for revamping work in 1998 while formulating a plan for the closure of Barauni, Durgapur and Haldia. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, then the Railway Minister, opposed the plan in 2000.
But Namrup Fertiliser Complex was given a fresh lease of life in April 2002 when if was bifurcated from HFCL to be renamed Brahmaputra Valley Fertilizer Corporation Limited.
“The fight for the plant has not ended as some units are past their expiry date and need revamping. This is resulting in frequent accidents, like the one in an old ammonia unit today (Sunday),” said Abani Kumar Gogoi, general secretary, Dibrugarh District Students’ Union.
The plant, he added, needs someone like Mr. Phukan for reviving its lost glory.
