Kashipur: The small town India

The town wakes up when several industries around it start belching out their effluents into the environment. The chimneys wake up and the first shift laborers rush in through the gates. The early morning shift change siren wake up the nearby localities as well. Creative destruction of the modernity is playing out well in these heartlands.

Old sugar factories (British era one) are getting closed down. Fertilizer factories, sugar factories, small paper mills etc. They are giving way to new pharma, FMCG, light capital goods industries coming up in nearby industrial clusters (some of them designated as SEZs). As factories close, the areas of economic activities shift as well. Old roads die, old neighborhoods, power lines, those surrounding villages become silent, quiet and languid. New roads now take the burden of eateries, fast rolling vehicles, accidents, gobble of some farmland and bring noise to soporific corners. The farmlands themselves, will soon be stabbed by new power lines

This is one sugar mill recently closed down. The machinery will be removed and the land sold for residential development.

 A view from distance with surrounding colonies.

The newspaper hawkers and delivery boys do their rounds around the neighborhood. The milkmen, their rickety old bullet/rajdoot motorcycles heavy with the loads of milk on sides, charge into various localities from the neighboring villages. they also bring in fresh news and gossip. Some people, charge in the reverse direction. They are the ones who do not trust home delivery models that much and combine a quick morning walk with a trip to the nearest house with a milking cow or buffalo. Sometimes this might take them a few kilometers away but the fresh milk obtained is worth the trouble.

In the main chouraha (traffic intersection), daily wage laborers gather from nearby villages. Soon, contractors will come looking for them. Wages will be negotiated and then they will be off to work. These days it is chillingly cold. But they gather nevertheless.

As the clock approaches seven, children assemble at various corners. Waiting for their autos, rickshaws, jugadu’s, tractor trolleys, and buses (depending upon their purchasing power, school’s distance and school’s reputation). Some travel the paths alone and all by themselves. They walk, cycle or hitch a ride on somebody’s bike.

The retail scene also opens up by 8 am. The hawkers do the rounds supplying bread, milk, eggs, small confectionery to the shopkeepers who have started taking first customers (usually children and housewives purchasing stationary and milk/bread etc) and cleaning their stores. Some show a citizen spirit and clean a bit of road outside. Some also sprinkle a bit of water on road, in order to ensure that the dust settles down.

An odd goods train pulls out, after unloading itself overnight, while passenger trains roll in. These days they are full of laborers going to National Capital Region. Cheap train fare has made it easier to commute 100 kilometers everyday, rather than live there and pay high rentals.

 This is the where goods train unload. Right next to the now closed down sugar mill.

I came across this eagle shaped water tank, constructed on the top of a Sikh family house.

This is one of the roads leading to surrounding villages.

 This winter season, the garden in my house is abloom with flowers. 

I went to Haldwani for a day. This is the industrial town of Lalkuan and the big paper mill there.

 And odd man washing clothes on the railway line.

And some new residential localities developing up near the foothills.