RENUNCIATION

Chapter V: The Yoga of Renunciation of Action

V.24. YO'NTAH SUKHO'NTARAARAAMAS TATHAANTARJYOTIR EVA YAH;
SA YOGEE BRAHMA NIRVAANAM BRAHMABHOOTO'DHIGACCHATI.

(Krishna speaking to Arjuna)
He who is ever happy within, who rejoices within,
who is illumined within, such a Yogi attains absolute
freedom or Moksha, himself becoming Brahman.

V.25. LABHANTE BRAHMA NIRVAANAM RISHAYAH KSHEENAKALMASHAAH;
CCHINNADWAIDHAA YATAATMAANAH SARVABHOOTAHITE RATAAH.
The sages obtain absolute freedom or Moksha-they whose sins
have been destroyed, whose dualities (perception of dualities
or experience of the pairs of opposites) are torn asunder,
who are self-controlled, and intent on the welfare of all beings.



//////////////////////// “I have always been fascinated by the law of reversed effort.

Sometimes I call it the “backwards law.”

When you try to stay on the surface of the water you sink;
but when you try to sink you float.

When you hold your breath you lose it—”

Alan Watts—
The Wisdom Of Insecurity


//////////////////////////“I want to know God’s thoughts. The rest are details.”


///////////////////////STEEL LOSES ITS SHEEN
Shut factory gates, jittery workers and plunging production. If the scene in the Durgapur belt is anything to go by, the steel industry may be facing its worst crisis yet
Ajanta Chakraborty, Udit Prasanna Mukherji & Debajyoti Chakraborty | TNN


It’s 12 noon and Durgapur is glowing under a November sun. It’s a pleasant sight, but then you realize something is not quite right. For one, the smoke haze that hangs over Bengal’s most polluted town is gone. Then, you notice the chimneys on either side of Durgapur Expressway. Hardly any of them are spewing the black smoke that normally shrouds the town. Most of the factories have fallen silent, casting a cloud over Bengal’s industrial scene.
The source of Durgapur’s despair is a five letter word: steel. “Till a few weeks back, we hadn’t realized that global meltdown had hit us so hard. There’s no production. A total shutdown seems imminent,” said a senior official of a unit at Mongolpur.
There is a thin line between “no production” and “closed down” though. The
gates of most sponge iron units in the industrial estates of Mongolpur, Jamuria, Bamunara and Angadpur (in the Durgapur-Asansol belt) are locked. But that’s not to be read as “closed down”. The factories are silent, but not quite deserted. A peep inside one — Sri Gopal HiTech at Bamunara — gives you the real picture. Two or three groups of workers sit huddled together, while the management staff amble around. “The rolling mill isn’t manufacturing, but we’re getting our salaries,” says Akhil Karmakar, a hydro operator.
The blast furnace is still operating, but it’s not enough to stem the anxiety. The labourers say being paid without doing any work can be depressing. “It’s no use denying that the slump is here to stay — at least for the next year. By then, we don’t know what will happen,” admits Bipin Vohra, chairman, SPS group, which is an integrated steel plant at Durgapur.
“Everyone is on a cost-cutting spree and we’re no exception. The worst hit are the stand-alone sponge iron units,” he says. Vohra then voices the worst fear. “Largescale retrenchment is on the cards.”
The future is tense. These 20-odd workers inside the deserted Bamunara industrial estate are symbolic of the major crisis looming over Bengal’s key sector. The lucrative business of the past four-five years seems like a dream now. The catalyst then was China, which bought much of its steel for infrastructural upgrade before the Beijing Olympics from Bengal. The economics of demand-and-supply worked wonders, triggering vertical growth at sponge iron and ferro alloy plants in Durgapur. The good times spread to Bankura and Purulia (Jamuria, Kanksa, Nituria, Mezia, Borjora and Bishnupur) as well. Then came the slump.
Old-timers say this isn’t the first crisis the Steel City — or the industry itself — has seen. Soon after the British left, the steel sector went through a bad patch. Technology, or the lack of it, was the major hurdle. This was as true for Durgapur Steel Plant (DSP), a unit of Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), as for smaller units. But the plants managed to live through the next decade until they bumped into the labour unrest in the late Sixties.
Years passed and good sense finally dawned. The government started thinking of reviving sick industries. DFID funds came handy. The late ’80s saw a turnaround in SAIL’s fortunes and DSP was modernised for a whopping Rs 5,000 crore even as it continued to make operational losses. The trade unions came to DSP’s aid and the public sector soon started earning profits.
Cut to 2001. The positivite vibes remained. Many first-generation entrepreneurs, who banked on the sector’s robust growth and received green signals from the state government, took the plunge. And why not? A sponge iron unit could be set up for just Rs 25-50 crore but earned profits to the tune of Rs 2,500 per tonne. A unit with a 100-tonne capacity raked in around Rs 60 lakh a month. The profit has now been replaced by a loss of Rs 30 lakh a month.
The euphoria continued till September 2008. By then, at least 15 middle and largescale industrialists had invested in iron and steel. Among them were bigger players like MB Group, Jai Balaji, Adhunik Group of Industries, Neo Metalic, Super Smelters and Shyam Steel. They were announcing crores of investment and the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation was only too happy to show them off as proof of Bengal’s industrial success. The plants mostly made value-added products like sponge iron, wire rod, thermomechanical treatment (TMT) — all used for construction, iron casting powder, etc.
It was too good to last. Lalit Beriwala, director, Shyam Steel (an integrated plant at Angadpur), cites four factors for the crisis. “Blame it on the unnecessary boom in real estate. The artificial requirement created a synthetic supply that couldn’t last. And now the bubble has burst,” he says. Around 26% of the manufactured steel caters to the real estate market.
Another factor was the steady erosion of the ferro alloy market and its near-zero export demand. Then there was the sudden plateau in the automobile sector. The final nail in the coffin was the go-slow at various industrial and infrastructure projects that had been hyped for political goals.
Now politicians, too, are at their wit’s end. Says P K Das, president of the Citubacked Steel Workers’ Federation of India, “This is the worst crisis the steel industry has faced since the 1930 recession.”
We’ve been making losses for the past two months. If we can’t decrease the workforce by 25% then most of the units here will be closed


////////////////////////I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
--Samuel Johnson


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