What its factory produces are dumped into Madhya Pradesh and today, outsiders are being allowed to rent apartments in the township, for lack of tenants. Steven Philip Warner visits a township that Nehru proudly inaugurated 47 years back, but today, is fast running out of breath...
His 5 ft 4 inch, light-pink pullovered figure stood right next to the PCO booth, outside the HMT Township main entrance gate; the notice at the main gate reading – ‘HMT Ltd. Pinjore, A Govt. of India Undertaking. Unauthorised Entrance Prohibited’. I was glad to be accompanied by a resident of the township and a former employee of HMT, who had worked for 30 years with the PSU, before he retired in February 2006. “You can look as far as you can to all the directions, and what you will see is a complete colony that was inaugurated by the late Pandit Nehru in 1962,” asserted Passi who was employed at the Machine Tools division of the Pinjore facility. The road which led into the township was clean and broad. And the surroundings were green enough to earn some carbon credits for the main factory, which stood to the north end of the colony. But that is where the good news ends for well-wishers of this township, literally.
“They are in a complete mess. The Machine Tools division is literally functioning underwater and even the tractor business is finding no buyers today,” claims Passi. The straight road led to a T-shaped diversion. At the end of the left turn, stood the huge HMT manufacturing facility, with umpteen multi-coloured tractors lined up alongside the road for lack of space inside the storage facilities. But to begin with, I decided to take a right where stood a school with its buildings painted yellow and about hundred children playing in the field. “When the GM of our HMT division [Passi couldn’t recall his name] could not get his son admitted anywhere close, he opened this school, and named it Central School, Pinjore. But then things turned rough, with employee count falling steadily at HMT and in 2004, a businessman from Delhi bought over this school and turned it private. It is called Millennium School, and is doing well,” added Passi with a smile. The school was affiliated to the CBSE Board and had levels from kindergarten to standard 12. After going on foot for five minutes, we reached Passi’s home, which he had occupied on a rental basis since 1991.
After a quick lunch with the family (him and his wife), I went for a stroll around the township. In the colony, I found two temples, a post office, two banks with ATMs (UCO Bank and PNB), a community hall named B. R. Ambedkar Auditorium (which was rented out for various functions to the general public, thus serving as a small revenue stream to HMT), an HP gas station, a dingy market where 50% of the shops had shutters on, and a sports club with dilapidated windows (where there were four souls to be seen – a man sleeping in the volleyball court, two young men in their early 20s contesting out at a game of table tennis and a four-five year-old child. For the records, all they had for the ladies was a room with few sewing machines!). Was this the fashion in which Nehru would have defined a healthy & prosperous township? Not certainly, looking by the manner in which we found the only clinic in the township, that would make a healthy person feel unwell by the manner in which the term ‘unhygienic’ seemed to be much appreciated by the authorities. It was called E. S. I. Dispensary and looked more unkempt than a stable!
His 5 ft 4 inch, light-pink pullovered figure stood right next to the PCO booth, outside the HMT Township main entrance gate; the notice at the main gate reading – ‘HMT Ltd. Pinjore, A Govt. of India Undertaking. Unauthorised Entrance Prohibited’. I was glad to be accompanied by a resident of the township and a former employee of HMT, who had worked for 30 years with the PSU, before he retired in February 2006. “You can look as far as you can to all the directions, and what you will see is a complete colony that was inaugurated by the late Pandit Nehru in 1962,” asserted Passi who was employed at the Machine Tools division of the Pinjore facility. The road which led into the township was clean and broad. And the surroundings were green enough to earn some carbon credits for the main factory, which stood to the north end of the colony. But that is where the good news ends for well-wishers of this township, literally.
“They are in a complete mess. The Machine Tools division is literally functioning underwater and even the tractor business is finding no buyers today,” claims Passi. The straight road led to a T-shaped diversion. At the end of the left turn, stood the huge HMT manufacturing facility, with umpteen multi-coloured tractors lined up alongside the road for lack of space inside the storage facilities. But to begin with, I decided to take a right where stood a school with its buildings painted yellow and about hundred children playing in the field. “When the GM of our HMT division [Passi couldn’t recall his name] could not get his son admitted anywhere close, he opened this school, and named it Central School, Pinjore. But then things turned rough, with employee count falling steadily at HMT and in 2004, a businessman from Delhi bought over this school and turned it private. It is called Millennium School, and is doing well,” added Passi with a smile. The school was affiliated to the CBSE Board and had levels from kindergarten to standard 12. After going on foot for five minutes, we reached Passi’s home, which he had occupied on a rental basis since 1991.
After a quick lunch with the family (him and his wife), I went for a stroll around the township. In the colony, I found two temples, a post office, two banks with ATMs (UCO Bank and PNB), a community hall named B. R. Ambedkar Auditorium (which was rented out for various functions to the general public, thus serving as a small revenue stream to HMT), an HP gas station, a dingy market where 50% of the shops had shutters on, and a sports club with dilapidated windows (where there were four souls to be seen – a man sleeping in the volleyball court, two young men in their early 20s contesting out at a game of table tennis and a four-five year-old child. For the records, all they had for the ladies was a room with few sewing machines!). Was this the fashion in which Nehru would have defined a healthy & prosperous township? Not certainly, looking by the manner in which we found the only clinic in the township, that would make a healthy person feel unwell by the manner in which the term ‘unhygienic’ seemed to be much appreciated by the authorities. It was called E. S. I. Dispensary and looked more unkempt than a stable!
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