ordant notes. In the jute industry, where the Hind Mazdoor Sabha and AITUC are just as powerful as CITU, the latter no longer rules the roost. At the broader level, even though the CPM as a party is way ahead of the CPI when it comes to vote share (36.92 per cent versus CPI’s 2.07 per cent in the last state polls), at the national level the CPI’s trade union wing, the AITUC, keeps reminding its big coalition partner in the state that when it comes to numbers the AITUC is ranked third while the CITU comes fifth.
For Hind Motors the Uttarpara facility, which manufactures Ambassadors, is no longer the key to survival. It now has plants at Indore, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka, where it makes engines, transmissions and their components, and automatic transmissions and their parts. It supplies these parts to the world’s leading vehicle manufacturers. In its own product stable, it has a plant in Tamil Nadu that makes the Mitsubishi Lancer and Pajero. For the sprawling Uttarpara complex itself, HM has plans to set up auto components and information technology parks — a diversification move that also involves real estate development on the prime Uttarpara factory land.
With Indian roads having been invaded by various local and foreign brands, the Ambassador is no longer the king it once was — in fact, not even in the government sector, where a white Ambassador had been for decades the only vehicle used. Old timers recall how in the mid-’70s, when the Indian government raised petrol prices following the global Oil shock, the then Congress government of Siddhartha Shankar Ray in West Bengal set up the Naba Gopal Das Commission to look into how HM could be saved. It had recommended that, since state had no control over petroleum prices, the government should ensure that there were enough orders for the Ambassador. Ray, in turn, convinced Indira Gandhi to give the Ambassador a monopoly. That was how the Ambassador came to account for a big segment of government orders.
... contd.
