The rusty old gate of Motipur Sugar Mill in the district of Muzaffarpur
DH photo.
Motipur (Muzaffarpur): The rusting old gates of the Motipur Sugar Mill in the district of Muzaffarpur, Bihar, have been locked for decades now. The iron gates, which once saw hundreds of trucks and wagons passing through them every day, now serve as a grim reminder of what once was the industrial heartbeat of north Bihar.
Time seems to have frozen behind these locked gates. Industrial chimneys stand cracked, machines are accompanied by weeds that have grown around them, and the pin-drop silence of the place tells its own story - one of decay, despair, deceit, and unfulfilled promises.
For the people of Motipur, the sugar mill is not just an abandoned factory. It is a story of broken livelihoods and faded hopes, and the old wounds resurface every election season.
'We had a very tough childhood ever since the factory shut. All of a sudden, the only source of income in the family stopped. We barely managed to have sufficient food on the plate, leave alone school education. Life completely changed overnight, and we still feel the pain of those days,' says Surendra Shah, whose father used to work in the factory when it got shut. 'The day the mill closed, it felt as if life went out of the town. Almost every house had someone who worked here.' Now, Shah runs a garment shop right in front of the abandoned factory building.
The place, which was once buzzing with the noise of crushing machines and boilers, now wears a silence that haunts the people living there. Locals say it was like any other factory where you couldn't hear anything else than the sound of machines during the sugarcane crushing period. And now, the very same people's hearts ache to see it like this.
From Sweetness to Silence
Set up in the early 1930s by a Kolkata-based industrialist and once one of the biggest sugar factories in Bihar, Motipur Sugar Mill had thousands of workers employed directly, and thousands more indirectly. Delayed payments to farmers were a regular feature in almost all sugar mills in Bihar, but Motipur mill was marred by some other factors - mismanagement and poorly maintained machinery. By the mid-1990s, the factory was deep in losses and finally shut down.
As the crushers have stopped, the town's growth too seems to have ceased. Madan Mahto, who had a tea stall in the 90s in the town, said, 'Motipur’s market used to buzz during the crushing season. After the mill closed, things got very tough for me. It became difficult for me to send money to provide for my children.'
Some farmers in the vicinity who could not transport their crop to far-off mills shifted to maize, wheat, and other crops, but 'profit is nothing compared to what cane gave' them, said Rajesh Thakur.
The shrinking mill
The guard who has been stationed inside the mill compound said that there has been encroachment and illegal occupation also on the land that belongs to the factory. Often he has found and chased away thieves trying to steal the iron and steel from the rusting machinery.
For the people of Motipur, the sugar mill is not just an abandoned factory. It is a story of broken livelihoods and faded hopes, and the old wounds resurface every election season.
DH photo
Locals say that a lot of things that belonged to the mill have been stolen by petty thieves, and now only the parts that are hard to grind or move are left inside the campus. When DH reached there, we also felt the same.
As the crushers have stopped, the town's growth too seems to have ceased.
Promises on repeat
Rajesh Shah pointed out that leaders across parties have come and made promises of restarting the mill to bring back the past glory of the town, but nothing has happened on the ground. MLA aspirants keep making big promises in their voter outreach exercise in the town and adjoining areas, but none of the elected representatives have taken any initiative to do that after winning.
'The day Motipur Sugar Mill reopens will be the day people start believing in government promises again,' says Mahadev Prasad, a retired school teacher who also grows sugarcane. According to Prasad, closure of such industrial units is also a reason why Bihar saw huge migration of workers to states like Punjab, Haryana and now in South too.