How India's fireworks hub Sivakasi has lost its spark

Her hands are covered with chemicals. The single red rubber bangle on her right hand has turned grey. Muthumari, 33, is waiting for her supervisor to turn up, so that she could collect the daily wages to buy new clothes for her two little daughters this Diwali. A daily-wage labourer at one of the leading cracker industries in Sivakasi, Muthumari has not made much money even during the festival season for the past two years.

“I do not know any other work. My husband Rathinavelu and I were running a small unit doing contract work for the big cracker companies here. But the ban on crackers and the green crackers has brought us down. We did not have any orders last year. My husband had to shut our shop and we came to work last year. This year is worse than last year. The production has come down largely,” says Muthumari.

The concept of green crackers and the Supreme Court order last year has robbed Sivakasi of all happiness. The cracker hub, which once bustled with activity making over Rs 2,000 crore during the festival season, has turned into a ghost town with more than 30 per cent of the small industries and even some of the big factories shutting shop. The fireworks industry in India is currently pegged at Rs 1,800 crore. The illegal business done by the small-scale units in the industry across India, according to the business estimates, is close to Rs 2,000 crore. At least 20 lakh people work as daily-wage labourers and to transport, store, distribute and sell fireworks across the country. At least 80 lakh people are associated with the industry by taking temporary licences to sell fire crackers just during the Diwali season.

“I used to take temporary licence every year to sell fireworks,” says Francis Xavier, a small time businessman in Chennai. “I used to run a temporary makeshift shop in T. Nagar or Kodambakkam in Chennai every year. But I stopped it last year as I could not afford it. This year again, my friends in the industry said it will not be profitable. So, I did not take the temporary licence to sell,” says Xavier.

At least 30 per cent of the work force in Sivakasi has been fighting to make ends meet in the past two years. It all began in 2015 when three children from Delhi moved the Supreme Court raising the issue of air pollution in the capital during Diwali. The apex court initially banned the crackers in Delhi alone. It subsequently withdrew the ban in 2018, but came down heavily on the cracker manufacturers in Sivakasi. It banned the use of barium nitrate, which is a major raw material for manufacturing crackers (Barium gives colour, sparkle and different decibels of noise to the crackers).

“Barium nitrate is harmful, we agree,” says R. Selvakumar, who once owned a small manufacturing unit in Sivakasi. “But it is just for the Diwali day. In Delhi, the emissions from vehicles, thermal power stations and other factors cause more pollution. But we had to face the trouble.”

The manufacturing units in Sivakasi were banned for more than 100 days in 2018 and the industry took a major hit.

In the meantime, came the concept of 'green crackers'. The CISR institution and the NEERI (National Environmental Engineering Research Institute) were supposed to come up with procedures to produce 'green crackers'. But the Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO) is of the opinion that most crackers cannot be produced without barium nitrate. And so, the PESO also did not go to court to explain the proposed 'green cracker' concept.

The 'green crackers' form only four per cent of the crackers rolled out to the stores.

With the organisations and institutions failing to arrive at a final solution, the cracker industry in Sivakasi which is called ‘Kutti Japan’ or small Japan, has lost over Rs 800 crore. While Supreme Court's verdict was considered good for public health and environment, it has taken a huge toll on the lives of the people of Sivakasi.