From The Debris

THE chilling calm after the storm. Official human loss figures touch the 1,000 mark. Twenty-one damaged ships bobbing forlornly in the Kandla Port waters, warehouses with ripped-off insides, strewn foodgrains "unfit for human consumption" and fertiliser bags lying askew. The skeletal remains of a hi-tech conveyor belt tell of the grinding halt foisted upon a port that, prior to June 9, 1998, was racing towards the top traffic spot among all other Indian ports for a second time consecutively. With relief measures and restoration on in full swing, the agenda of Kandla Port is clearly similar to that of the other industries in the region: getting back to business.

Or almost. The state is poorer by Rs 1,200 crore. And, says state industry minister Suresh Mehta: "The Gujarat industry along the cyclone-hit belt—totalling over 1,340 units including the private sector—has suffered losses to the tune of Rs 143 crore. Over and above this, the salt sector has suffered losses of Rs 125 crore."

The big casualties: Kandla Port Trust, the ginning and pressing branch of the textile industry at Porbunder, units of the Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) along Kutch, and the Reliance Industries refinery at Jamnagar. Further, damages to the Gujarat Electricity Board (GEB) have touched a crippling Rs 531 crore, various irrigation projects are set back by Rs 6.69 crore and the Gujarat Maritime Board (GMB) shoulders an extra burden of Rs 116 crore. All this is topped by loss of power and lab-our. Says R.K. Jani, chief development offi-cer, GIDC: "The economics of the entire belt will undoubtedly be affected though it is difficult to estimate the losses."

 And they are piling up—threatening to impact on the entire region with a fury akin to that of the recent cyclone. Kandla Port Trust (KPT) was struck by image-battering and a direct loss of Rs 132 crore—unsalvageable as its assets are uninsured. A.N.M. Kishore, chairman, KPT, is pragmatic: "We had a turnover of Rs 190 crore last year. Now, we are going to suffer from revenue losses for the next few months. Plus there is a shortage of labour. We aren't likely to retain our number one position or reach our target of handling 40 million tonnes this year." KPT is inching towards normalcy—five dry cargo and three oil jetties are being recommissioned while one oil jetty and the Vadinar Single Byoy Mooring (SBM) pumping crude oil have already been restarted.But with private as well as the port storage facilities devastated and with only 25 per cent of the capacity available, the impact on cargo consolidation has been tremendous. On the one hand, two lakh tonnes of rice await shipment even as rice exporters lurch under a Rs 100 crore loss. Wheat exporters from the North are clamouring for more berths. "If operations do not restart immediately, they are in danger of losing their entire export orders," says Kishore. The resultant chain reaction is unrelenting.

"Our loss began with the cyclone but it's increasing with the passage of time," laments a local cargo mover. "I have 19 container vessels which are presently lying idle. All business has been diverted to Nhava Sheva Port in Bombay."

 Not all regions have witnessed a similar change of tide. The stormy ripples arising from the cyclone have swept right up to the north-west region of the country. "The Kandla-Bhatinda pipeline, which supplies finished POL products to the north and is its lifeline, is back on the manual mode," says M. S. Ramachandran, executive director, western region marketing division, Indian-Oil. And so, the north grappled with the meagre supply of crude and petroleum products. Moreover, LPG imports to the country have wavered with the incoming oil traffic being diverted from Kandla—which handles more than half of India's crude and petroleum product imports—to the Mangalore Port. The latter has a capacity of only 90,000 tonnes per month against the required 160,000-170,000 tonnes. The after-effects of the crippled Kandla port impacted on Western Asia petroleum oil prices too, as sellers downed prices for prompt lifting of their cargoes following higher freight rates for vessels plying between West Asia and India and the possibility of IOC deferring supplies.

On the edible oil front, Mumbai was hit by the escalating price of groundnut oil, cyclone-ravaged Saurashtra's major produce, which shot up from Rs 43,800 per tonne to Rs 48,700.

Closer to the scene of the devastation, the Gandhidham Chamber of Commerce (GCC) listed out the losses of various industries. Transport industry: Rs 100 crore; timber industry (including the veneer and plywood industry): Rs 53 crore; import-export goods: Rs 150 crore; warehouses, cranes and machinery: Rs 100 crore; barges, ships and tugs: Rs 400 crore; and the salt industry: Rs 117 crore. "Kandla is nothing without the port," says Dinesh Gupta, treasurer, GCC, "Everything else depends on it. We've been assured that the KFT will restart operations by the month-end, but suppliers and buyers are wary. Therefore, as of now no ship is loading any cargo and there is nothing being exported from here."

 The cyclone has claimed its share of railway freight as well. Freight business amounting to over two lakh tonnes of goods—mainly POL, fertilisers and coal—has been washed out with the disruption of the five-km Kandla Port-Gandhidham rail line.

Damages are still being estimated at Jamnagar, where the cyclone caused huge destruction. Flooded with frantic dispatches from trade committees, a harried Girish Chandra Murmu, collector, Jamnagar, says: "GEB has suffered a loss of about Rs 50 crore in the region. The major grouse is the unavailability of power for trade. The 50,000 electric poles, which took 35 years to install, have to be repaired within a fortnight. Hence, the losses to trade, commerce and industry, which are mounting by the day, are definitely over Rs 100 crore." Add to that, a staggering loss estimated at Rs 200 crore borne by Reliance, a loss of over Rs 2 crore borne by Gujarat State Fertiliser Corporation (GSFC), an estimated Rs 20 crore loss apparently suffered by the Essar Refinery and a Rs 2 crore loss weighing on Tata Chemicals. Apparently, the occurrence prompted Tata Chemicals to intimate the Bombay Stock Exchange of minor damages to its Mithapur outfit—leading to its scrip witnessing a spot drop to Rs 125.10 before finally recovering at Rs 129.10.

For the Gujarat salt industry, which contributes 70 per cent of the nation's salt output, this figure is just the tip of the salt heap. Over a lakh of salt pan acres have been eliminated off Kandla and Gandhidham with 32,000 hectares following suit at Jamnagar. With 10 lakh tonnes of salt washed at Kandla itself, the Kandla salt manufacturing association predicts a nationwide shortage within the next three months, eventually leading up to blackmarketing of salt. "It's a dead loss for the Saurashtra Salt Manufacturers Association," says its president Bharat Kamdar. "The earthwork, the condensers, the salt stock, nothing is insured. We have now been informed that it will take over a month for power to be restored. If the tide comes in, the earthwork will be completely destroyed. Loss of labour has also ensured that we can't restart the work."

 Labour—or the lack of it—has also affected heavyweights like Reliance, which first reeled under the impact of the cyclone as it damaged watertank facilities, the roofs of almost all labour camps, 700 trucks, 1,500 computers, 55 site offices, 20 oil tanks. "We lost 8,000-10,000 workers because of rumours of yet another impending cyclone. But they are gradually returning," says a Reliance Group spokesperson. An additional 6,500 labourers have been temporarily hired to get the house in order. Since only temporary structures were struck, site officers point out that the permanent plans of the refinery remain unchanged. "Out of the Rs 22,000 crore earmarked for the project, Rs 14,000 crore has already been spent. The captive power plant and the transport jetty had already been commissioned. The water distillation plant is 95 per cent through while the main refinery and aromatic plant are 70 per cent complete. Our plants have escaped untouched and will be commissioned on schedule in 1999."

 For the lightweights, though the Gujarat government has no policy to resuscitate industry directly, Mehta has promised relief to interest rates and tax and electricity dues. Meanwhile, as "construction activities resumed from June 12 itself" at Essar, Kandla-based IFFCO's general manager S.K. Mishra combats the loss of a jetty and property amounting to Rs 6 crore for rapid commencement of ship berthing operations. While Reliance bounced back in two days, the neighbouring GSFC wears a deserted look: power paucity and a bent ammonia pipeline causes a production loss of 2,000 tonnes per day.

And as Jamnagar's naval base INS Valsura has with 2,000 saplings, embarked on a mass plantation drive to revive "Saurashtra's greatest patch", the salt fields wear a barren look. For those who are among the hardest-hit, rose-tinted pronouncements only seem a chimeric flash in the pans.