Chennai: Proud of its nationalist heritage, thanks to heroes like Tirupur Kumaran, is the ‘Dollar city’ in Tamil Nadu’s 32nd district, carved out of Coimbatore and Erode districts just six years ago, facing the unseemly prospect of turning into a basket case in the hands of Maoists? This rather hyperbolic yet relevant query makes political circles quiver in the wake of the recent arrest of a much-wanted Leftwing extremist, Roopesh of CPI (Maoist), his wife Shyna and three of his associates at Coimbatore; more so after the spotlight turned to India’s top exporting hosiery centre of Tirupur, 50 km from the textile city, where Roopesh and his wife had been staying for the last nearly two-and-a-half years.
For a vibrant knitwear industrial cluster, covering the entire range from the common vests and briefs to premium brands of wrinkle-free apparels using latest ‘new wash technology’, Tirupur’s growth model since the 1990s’ has been astonishing despite serious infrastructure constraints. And this has raised concern whether the town is really vulnerable to Maoists’ infiltration.
Wanted by the police of the southern states right from 2009, Roopesh was a top-notch Maoist, “coordinating activities mainly in the tribal areas of Western Ghats of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, trying to influence the tribal people,” says a former Intelligence official tracking Leftwing extremism in different parts of the country for several years now.
Trying to tap into the failure of the state machinery in implementing welfare schemes for the Adivasis, particularly in places like Attapadi in Palakkad district, Roopesh and his team are believed “to be concentrating in the Calicut-Wynad-Malappuram belt”, said the official, explaining why they logistically chose to operate from the fringes in nearby Coimbatore. They were allegedly trying to wean discontent tribal youths into the Maoists-fold.
Roopesh’ arrest “is a major breakthrough”. He was not only wanted in several cases, but was also Central Committee member playing a key coordinating role in the South for the CPI(Maoist), after the ‘encounter killings’ of Raja Mouli from Karnataka and Malla Raji Reddy in Andhra Pradesh, the former official said. Roopesh, hailing from Kerala, had been working with another active associate Murali, also from Kerala, with the latter known in Leftwing circles to be an extremely articulate ideologue. But the duo fell apart after some time, the well-informed source pointed out. However, the Maoists hardly made any serious dent in the Western Ghat tribal belt with the political awareness among the Adivasis being very high, the former official said. As a “cosmopolitan, growing urban centre with a large floating population, Roopesh and his team may have chosen Tirupur as their hideout so that their movements went unnoticed,” he reasoned.
Traditional Left losing ground ?
The Tamil Nadu Q-Branch police are investigating the seizures, including a number of CDs, made from Roopesh’s rented home in Tirupur, says district collector G. Govindaraj, who has no grounds to see any ‘red resurgence’ in the ‘dollar city’. In fact, in the latest fiscal 2014-15, Tirupur knitwear exports clocked Rs. 20,730 crore compared to Rs. 18,000 crore in the previous year, says the Tirupur Exporters Association (TEA), which also plays a catalytic, stake-holding role in its infrastructure development.
Interestingly, Roopesh’ hideout at M.S. Nagar in Tirupur was not initially stumbled upon by the police. It came to light when the house-owner seeing his ‘tenants’ photos being flashed by TV channels after being arrested in Coimbatore, got worried and informed the local police about their stay. This itself is an indication of the extent to which the busy, globalizing Tirupur is oblivious to such seamy developments, a veteran CPI functionary opined.
“The AITUC and CITU, trade-union wings of the CPI and CPM, still hold sway among the labour class in Tirupur; other mainstream parties also have their trade unions in the city, upgraded to a Municipal Corporation; but they are not as strong as they used to be as the very nature of the factory system is undergoing a huge shift from regular workers-centric knitwear and dyeing units to outsourcing, contracting and sub-contracting,” the CPI leader said.
But it did not mean Tirupur has become a new hub of radical Left, he emphasized. “With the dollar city’s rapid growth, the scope for rentals is very high. Roopesh must have found it a convenient place to hole up and was not known to be undertaking any propaganda activity there,” he added.The ambitious integrated infrastructure projects taken up in PPP mode, the first of its kind in the country, under the aegis of the ‘New Tirupur Area Development Corporation Limited’ at a total cost of Rs. 1,023 crore, is aimed at improving its competitive advantage as an export hub.
Inaugurated in June 2003, only the water supply component has been completed so far. “Exports are picking up with government support,” says Mr. Govindaraj. The water project has had a positive impact on Tirupur’s growth story in recent years, after the SMEs’ were battered by the exchange rate/derivatives crisis, the 2008 global financial meltdown, and after partly mitigating the effluents problem that has polluted the Noyyal river, admits a TEA member.
Adding to its woes was a spurt in suicide rates, largely among migrant workers there in 2009-2010. As these issues are being overcome in phases, government tackling the water shortage first in Tirupur has now partly helped the knitwear units to “focus on their core competence”. However, due to local labour shortage and the ‘demand for labour at short notice spurting’, a large number of migrant labour from the North - mainly Bihar, Odisha and to some extent Gujarat, come to work in both the knitting and dyeing units. Hence, “the administration needs to put in place a background verification system, to avert possible infiltration of radical/ extremist elements into Tirupur,” the TEA office-bearer added.
