INSIDE THE COLD KILNS OF INDIA'S CERAMIC CAPITAL

A cluster that learnt to outcompete China now confronts a crisis far beyond its control

- T. Surendar [e-mail]

Eden Ceramic City, a marketing mall for premium brands in Morbi, wears a deserted look as both local and international customers delay their visits.

On most nights, Morbi glows.

The light comes from hundreds of ceramic kilns firing through the darkness, turning clay into tiles that travel across India and into markets as far as the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The heat is relentless, the rhythm uninterrupted. Kilns, once started, do not stop. That is both their power and their peril: a kiln mid-fire cannot simply be switched off without damaging the product inside and the machinery itself. The technology demands constancy.

Now, the kilns have stopped.

Across the cluster, chimneys stand silent. Factory gates are half-shut. Trucks wait in long, unmoving lines at the edges of industrial estates. Inside the factories, there are no workers manning production lines. They haven't been formally laid off as yet and are now either in their dormitories or back home in their native villages waiting for the signal to return back to work.

At the offices of the Morbi Ceramic Manufacturers Association, the past several weeks have been marked by a quiet, grinding urgency. On 17 March, more than 200 manufacturers gathered and ratified a vote to keep factories shut until 15 April. By that point, nearly 90% of units had already halted production — many for over two weeks — unable to secure adequate gas supplies. A day after the meeting, the manufacturers returned, Not to reopen, but to submit estimates of how much fuel they would need when supply eventually resumed. It is a rare and revealing sight: an industry planning for production in the total absence of fuel.