LONG HAUL FOR SURAT

A SUDDEN SPURT IN COVID CASES THREATENS TO DERAIL THIS DIAMOND AND TEXTILE HUB’S ATTEMPT TO GET BACK TO BUSINESS

- UDAY MAHURKAR

ON July 13, the daily count of new Covid cases breached the 900 mark in Gujarat, with Surat alone accounting for 287 infections—the city’s highest single-day figure yet. It was a new low for this textile and diamond trading hub that is now one of the biggest Covid hotspots in the state. The last time Surat, a city of 6.6 million people, faced a health emergency of such a scale was in 1994 when scared residents bolted out to escape the pneumonic plague epidemic.

As of July 14, of the 42,722 Covid cases in Gujarat, 7,540 had been reported from Surat—many of them textile and diamond industry workers. The city recorded 320 fatalities, over 15 per cent of the state’s death toll of 2,055. More than 12,000 people were in institutional and home quarantine. Officials find reason for alarm as the total active cases (2,472) have doubled over the past three weeks. This has sparked off widespread panic among the diamond polishing and textile business communities just as they were looking to restart operations after a near-three-month shutdown.

TEXTILES IN TATTERS

The national lockdown, beginning March 25, had put Surat’s 700,000 looms and 350 dye manufacturing units in a limbo. The looms and other related textile activities, which employ some 1.5 million people, ceased to operate, suffering huge losses. With an annual turnover of Rs 96,000 crore, as per industry estimates, Surat’s textile trade—from yarn to finished product— is staring at losses to the tune of Rs 24,000 crore in the past three months.