Patna, May 24: Nitish Kumar has given Mamata Banerjee a poll victory gift - Bihar's first club soda plant is closing shop and moving to Siliguri in north Bengal.
Rambriksha Food and Beverage (Pvt) Ltd, a franchise of the UB group, had been supplying soda water under the McDowell brand name to all major clubs, hotels, restaurants and bars through its seven distributors across Bihar for the past 10 years. But prohibition, imposed across Bihar on April 5, has severely hit the plant, located at Zero Mile on the eastern outskirts of Patna.
"It was really a painful decision to take, economically as well as emotionally. We have to lay off the employees by May 30. Our board has decided to clear off the bank's loan of Rs 38 lakh by selling off a portion of the land on which we had the plant. We are in the process of shifting the plant to Siliguri (Bengal) by next month. We hope to find a new market and recoup the colossal loss that we have suffered on account of total prohibition in Bihar," said Subodh Kumar (45), the director and owner of Rambriksha beverage.
Bihar has one of the strictest prohibition regimes in India with liquor banned in all establishments. Consumption and possession of liquor can invite jail terms of up to 10 years. Industrialists who spoke under cover of anonymity said more business from the state could move to neighbouring Bengal, where Mamata won a landslide election victory last week.
" Apne hi ghar mein begana mahsoos kar raha hoon (We are feeling alien in our own land)," a pensive Subodh told The Telegraph. "The officials and leaders here don't treat us as civilised citizens ...they treat us as if we are offenders. I felt like breathing in fresh air when I went to Siliguri in connection with business after Nitishji announced total prohibition. The officials in Bengal have been very cooperative. Siliguri is the gateway to the Northeast and Bhutan. Moreover, it has tourist hotspots such as Darjeeling and Gangtok nearby. We hope to recover our loss and re-build our business in Bengal."
Subodh, son of a retired IAS officer and a graduate in metallurgical engineering from the National Institute of Technology (NIT)-Jamshedpur, worked at a public sector steel plant in Visakhapatnam before he decided to quit his job in 2003 and turn entrepreneur in his home state.
"I had raised the plant like my baby. After leaving a good job, I had started the plant on a plot of five cottahs - a piece of land bought by my father long ago at Zero Mile - in 2003-04 with an initial investment of Rs 40 lakh to produce bottled water. In 2007-08, we got the UB group franchise to manufacture club soda water. Our business grew as we used to manufacture and sell 1,500 to 2,000 cartons (each carton contains 24 bottles) per day. We effectively gained a monopoly in Bihar's market with all the major hotels, clubs and bars preferring our product," said Subodh.
After the imposition of total prohibition last month by the Nitish government, consumption of soda water has gone down drastically across Bihar. "Unlike in Delhi and some other metropolitan cities where people use soda water to make shikanji or lemonade, Bihar's people seldom consume club soda except when mixing it with liquor. Once the government banned liquor, which included Indian Made Foreign Liquor, our plant turned irrelevant. Last month we got an order of barely 100 to 150 cartons. This month we have got no order so far. We had no way out other than shutting our shop and shifting elsewhere to survive," Subodh said.
"It is painful to lay off 15 direct employees who had given their blood and sweat and were dependent on us. Its closure has adversely affected seven distributors associated with us and also several ancillary companies like bottle levelling plants, cap-making units and carrier operators engaging hundreds of people."
Asked if the government had put in place a parallel mechanism to stop the flight of liquor-related ancillary units from the state, director, industries, Pankaj Kumar Singh said: "We don't have any idea about the closure of the plant you are referring to. The government has so far not thought about the fate of liquor-related ancillaries."
Subodh, however, said the Bihar Industries Association (of which he is a member) had written several letters related to his plant's plight to the government. "But the government has simply closed its door on us," said another industrialist who did not wish to be named.
