NEW DELHI: Pick up a pencil anywhere in India and it is highly likely it was made using the soft wood of poplar trees native to Ukhoo, a village in Pulwama district in Indian-administered Kashmir.
The area, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a radio show last year, supplies more than 90% of the wood used by India’s pencil manufacturers, earning it the nickname “pencil village.”
But as pandemic school closures have dealt a major blow to the education and related industries, Ukhoo too has seen a sharp drop in demand for its main product, pencil slats, leading factory owners to reduce their workforce.
Out of 18 slat factories in the Kashmir Valley, 17 are in Pulwama district and seven in Ukhoo on the banks of the Jhelum River.
Workers produce pencil slats at a Jhelum Agro Industry factory in Ukhoo village, Pulwama district, in Indian-administered Kashmir on December 18, 2021. (Photo courtesy: Manzoor Ahmad Allaie)
“Earlier, we used to have a turnover of over $130,000 per month, now it’s just $27,000 to $40,000,” said pencil slat factory owner Manzoor Ahmad Allaie, who owns Jhelum Agro Industries, adding that his unit’s production had reduced to 30 percent of pre-coronavirus levels and revenue had significantly decreased.
The 45-year-old businessman said he set up his factory in 2013 when he first learnt that a pencil factory was sourcing wood from the valley.
“I visited pencil manufacturing units in Jammu and found that they are making slats out of logs before making pencils,” he said. “Then I suggested to manufacturers that this wooden block can be made in the valley itself and that will save the cost and time, and in 2013 we set up the first unit.”
Allaie started with 15 employees, a number that grew tenfold over the year, he said, saying his company and other local producers supplied pencil factories in Jammu, Chandigarh and Gujarat, and one of the country’s largest pencil manufacturers, Nataraj.
Workers produce pencil slats at a Jhelum Agro Industry factory in Ukhoo village, Pulwama district, in Indian-administered Kashmir on December 18, 2021. (Photo courtesy: Manzoor Ahmad Allaie)
Now, the pandemic had plunged the industry into a “deep crisis,” said Feroz Ahmad, the owner of Barkat Agro Industries, which entered the business in 2014.
“This industry not only employs locals but also people from outside,” he said, “but the government is not doing enough to protect us.” he said.
Allaie agreed that Ukhoo needed the “attention of the government.”
A local administration official said the government was exploring ways to give the industry a boost through incentives but manufacturers first needed to “fulfill certain requirements.”
“The pencil industry in the Ukhoo village is in an unorganized sector that means the factories are operating from private lands,” Mahmood Ahmad Shah, an industries and commerce director in the Jammu and Kashmir administration, told Arab News. “We are exploring the possibilities to find some lands in Ukhoo village and declare it an industrial estate and move the industries there.”
A recent ministry of home affairs report said Ukhoo would be developed as a “special zone” for manufacturing.
“Now the whole country would be supplied finished pencils,” the report said, “manufactured completely in Pulwama.”