29TH INDIA INTERNATIONAL LEATHER FAIR 2014- WELL ORGANISED AND HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL

29TH IILF 2014 – WELL ORGANISED AND HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL

V. M. Khaleelur Rahman

The 29^th India International Leather Fair (IILF) 2014 inaugurated by the Hon’ble Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Dr. EM Sudarshana Nachiappan, the Chief Guest, on 31^st January and held from 1^st to 3^rd February 2014 at Chennai Trade Centre, Chennai was well organized and well attended by 385 exhibitors including 92 from overseas representing 18 countries and with 4 country pavilions by Germany, Italy, France and Thailand and quite a large number of business visitors, officials and others. This joint endeavour of ITPO, CLE and CSIR-CLRI was highly successful. 

As rightly pointed out by Shri Malay Shrivastava, Executive Director, India Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO) in his welcome address, the fair was an occasion to compliment the Indian leather industry for its constant positive growth and for building “Brand India” globally. The ITPO plays the role of a Catalyst by organizing the event. It is now well established in the international calendar of global fairs.  

The Chief Guest distributed the CLE’s Export Excellence Awards and Special Awards to the winners and assured the industry that its demands would be considered favourably. He had all appreciation for the TNTPO for its effective role in popularizing the name of the Chennai Trade Centre. He assured that it would be further modernized with additional facilities. 

Addressing the international audience the Hon’ble Minister said that there were huge opportunities in India for investment and also for technology transfer as well as manufacturing. He stressed that Design was an area of focus for the Government and they were ready to support private sector endeavours in knowledge excellence and research in Design. He also stated that ethnic designs from India need to be commercially exploited. 

He further said that there was a need for more young entrepreneurs and women entering into this sector and expressed his happiness that the industry was marching ahead. 

Shri RK Jalan, Chairman, CLE, announced that the current year had been very good for the Indian leather industry with an all time export high of US$ 5 billion with a positive growth of 17%. He said that this was possible because of the innovative schemes and policies of the Government of India. He appealed to the Government for support especially under the Environment Protection Schemes for the up-gradation of the CETP’s set up for achieving the ZLD norms. He committed that the industry would share the costs with the Government. He stressed on the need to create additional capacities and said that new “Greenfield Clusters” needed to be fast tracked. 

Shri N. Shafeeque Ahmed, Vice Chairman, CLE and Shri PR Aqeel Ahmed, Regional Chairman (SR), CLE, also spoke on the occasion congratulating the Award winners and wishing all success to all participants of IILF 2014. 

Some of the new overseas participants were happy in participating in this event as they had the opportunity in meeting so many industrialists and promoting their products.  

However there was a feeling among a section of the industry that the inaugural function should have been telecast live and conducted in a better manner highlighting the importance of the Indian leather industry. 

LEATHER MARKET

In the Chennai local market, prices for tanned goat skins are ruling almost the same or slightly higher. There were reports of business at around the following prices:

4/6 sq. ft. grain selection, RVIF Rs.65, Lining Rs.46, 5/8 sq. ft. Lining Rs.50 per sq. ft.

4/6 sq. ft. All Suede Rs.50 per sq. ft.

F/C Suede 4/6 sq. ft. ABC Rs.70 per sq. ft.

Tanners are quoting at around Rs.100/80/70/60 per sq. ft. for 5/8 Run/V/IF/LIF. 

As far as raw goat skins are concerned, the prices are as follows:

Miraj areas around Rs.250 per piece for 5 sq. ft. and up average and Rs.200 per piece for 4/4.5 sq.ft. average.

Andhra areas around Rs.170 per piece

As regards Red hair raw sheep skins, the ruling prices are around Rs.250 to 300 per piece depending on size and quality. In areas like Kadapa where the yield is 5.5 sq. ft and up the price is around Rs.300 per piece. 

OVERSEAS MARKET

There seems to be no big change in the overseas market. Some business are reported in S/C and F/C goat lining leather at around US$1.60 per sq. ft. Some Korean and Italian customers were also in Chennai during last month and they have concluded some good contracts. 

Exporters are quoting at around the following prices:

                                        F/C AND S/C GOAT LEATHERS

Material	Size/sq. ft.	Substance	Selection	Price US$ per sq. ft. C&F
Goat upper leather	3/5 or 4/7	0.6/0.8 mm	ABC  40/40/20%	2.75
Goat milled leather	4/7	0.6/0.8 mm	E/D -50/50%	1.70
Goat suede leather	4/7	0.6/0.8 mm	All Suede	2.25
Goat lining leather	4/7	0.5/0.7 mm	TR Lining	1.60
	6/9	0.6/0.8 mm	TR Lining	1.70

                                               F/C SHEEP LEATHERS

Material	Size/sq.ft.	Substance	Selection	Price US$ per sq. ft. C&F
Sheep Nappa leather	5/8	0.6/0.8 mm	ABC	3.00
Sheep Cabretta	4/7	0.6/0.8 mm	ABC	2.75
Sheep lining leather	4/7	0.5/0.7 mm	TR-1	1.80
Sheep lining leather	5/8	0.6/0.8 mm	TR-1	1.90

TANNERIES REOPOEN IN AMBUR 

The good news to the leather industry here and abroad is that the tanneries closed some three months ago in the Thuthipet area of Ambur due to effluent problem have started reopening thanks to the efforts taken by the Amburtec – the common effluent treatment plant for tanneries. It is a big relief to all sections of the people in the industry, particularly workers and staff. It is learnt that tanners are taking all precautionary measures to see that nothing goes wrong. All’s well that ends well. 

(VMK in Indian Leather, March 2014)

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The forgotten inheitance of Maulana Abul Kalam Azam

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-forgotten-inheritance-of-azad/article5714121.ece

The forgotten inheritance of Azad

By S. IRFAN HABIB

The Hindu

February 22, 2014

It was on this day in 1958 that Maulana Abul Kalam Azad passed away. It was not merely the death of an extraordinary human being but also the death of an idea that sparkled for a few decades — the idea of an undivided India where Muslims could live happily with the Hindu majority. Muslims made India their home centuries ago, and according to Azad, they had a huge stake in the idea of India. However, Azad’s idea received a jolt in 1947 as the violence of partition ravaged India. Azad went on to live for another ten years, helping in healing and rebuilding the scarred and bruised new India.

Azad lived many lives. Some of them are well known, yet some have remained mysteriously unknown. Not much is known or written about them in public. There was a decade in his early days when he was disenchanted with the inherited faith and had to brazen out some difficult and uncomfortable questions about Islam.

Even before arriving at this situation, he was a rebel as a child who disagreed with his father’s faith, got enamoured of Sir Syed’s modernism that his father Maulvi Khairuddin hated, and decided to learn sitar on the quiet though his father did not approve of music. His dissent against the inherited belief went even further — he became an atheist (dehri) and reposed faith only in materialism and rationalism. Religion was reduced merely to a superstition. From the age of 14 to the mid-20s, he just put up a facade of belief in public but inwardly remained completely without faith.

A different Islam

This short phase in his life was ephemeral as he soon got back to Islam, yet his Islam remained qualitatively different. And it is on this count that Azad stands distinctly apart from everyone else. He was himself conscious of the fact that not many people went along with him when he said: “In religion, in literature, in politics, on the paths of philosophy, wherever I went, I went alone. The caravans of the times did not support me on any of my journeys.”

Azad emphasised all his life on the original spirit of engagement with the Quranic text, which was available to all believers of Islam. He refused to accept the canonised Islam; instead he called for independent reasoning or ijtihad to interpret the faith. He also warned against reading more than what was intended to be conveyed in the Quran. This sounds so prophetic in the contemporary context where Islam is invoked by many to speak what they want the Book to speak.

Ghubar-i-Khatir is a collection of letters written in the Ahmednagar Fort prison during three years of incarceration between 1942-45, where Maulana Azad opens his mind to some very unconventional and mundane issues. For example, one of the letters deals with his lifelong passion for tea. He began his day, he writes, with a freshly brewed cup of white Chinese jasmine tea that he consumed mostly alone as no one else could appreciate its taste. Most others were addicted to a concoction mixed with milk and sugar which the British had told them was tea. Only Jawaharlal Nehru, he wrote, used to have black tea, but not the real Chinese tea. In another letter he writes about happiness. He cites a Chinese person saying: “Who is the wisest man? The answer is: He who is the happiest.” Interestingly, he derides those who believe that men of religion and philosophy need to look serious and morose. This, he says, cannot be a pre-condition for respectability and learning.

Reforms in education

Azad also comments upon the education system and syllabi in the context of his own education in late 19th Century India, particularly the Islamic madrasas. He wrote: “It was an outdated system of education which had become barren from every point of view — teaching methods defective, worthless subjects of study, deficient in the selection of books, defective way of reading and calligraphy.” If this is what Azad felt about the Islamic madrasas more than hundred years ago, we can well imagine the urgency and necessity of radical reform in the contemporary system of education.

He is critical of even Al-Azhar University and calls its syllabus poor. Expressing a sense of relief at the fact that he did not have to depend on these madrasas for his early education, he writes: “Just imagine if I had stopped there and had not gone in search of new knowledge with a new curiosity, what would be my plight! Obviously my early education would not have given me anything except a stagnant mind, a total stranger to reality.”

The present day Islamic enthusiasts need to learn a lesson or two from the insights of a scholar like Azad — both from his writings against conformism and conservatism and his questioning of his own family’s intellectual and religious inheritance. He writes further in another letter: “Nothing is greater hindrance to the growth of a mind than its conservative beliefs. No other power binds it as do the shackles of conformity…At times so strong is the grip of inherited beliefs that education and environment also cannot loosen it. Education would give it a new paint but never enter the inner belief structure where the influence of race, family and centuries old traditions continue to operate.”

We need to reflect upon and recall Maulana Azad’s precious and mostly forgotten inheritance, which was based on free thinking and pluralism. In particular, Azad’s Islam was much more accommodative than the contemporary rigid and combative Islam.

That is why, at times like these, when religious fault lines threaten the very idea of India, we must pay heed to Azad’s inheritance.

(S. Irfan Habib holds the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad chair at Delhi’s National University of Educational Planning and Administration.)

CHEERS TO TET CANDIDATES IN TAMIL NADU

Relaxation in Teacher Eligibility Test (TET)- Cheer to candidates

The Tamil Nadu government announced on Monday, 3^rd February 2014 that the minimum qualifying marks for the reserved categories in the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) for SC/ST, BC, BC (Muslims), MBC and denotified communities and the differently-abled is the minimum pass percentage of 55%. This concession is given with retrospective effect and is applicable to candidates who appeared in the August 2013 test as well. Passing the TET is the minimum qualification for appointment as teachers for classes 1 to 8.

No doubt this decision taken by the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu Ms. J. Jayalalithaa at the suggestion of the MMK MLA Mr. M.H. Jawahirullah and PT MLA Mr. K. Krishnasamy should have brought much cheer to the candidates who appeared in the August 2013 test. 

However in the coming teacher eligibility tests we hope candidates whatever may be their castes or creeds  will secure as high marks as possible and prove that they are capable of improving the quality and standard of education. .

INDIA INTERNATIONAL LEATHER FAIR 2014

CHENNAI LEATHER MARKET

V.M. Khaleelur Rahman

There is continued demand for tanned goat skins in the market. As usual exporters of leather and leather products are interested in buying various items.  But there is less demand for “suede” selection despite price reductions in it. .

The prices available in the market for tanned goat skins, All Suede is only around Rs.51 which is considered to be an unworkable price. However Grain selections receive good support from buyers at around the following prices:

4/6 sq. ft. Run/V/IF 40/40/20% Rs.68, Run Rs.75, 5/8 Run Rs.90, V Rs.80, IF Rs.70, LIF Rs.60, A Lining Rs.51, B Lining Rs.48, C Lining Rs.45, Rejection Rs.30 and Langda Rs.20, all per sq. ft. It is learnt that wet blue goat skins are also sold at around these prices in some selections.

As far as F/C crust goat skins are concerned, 4/6 sq. ft. ABC is sold at around Rs.80 and ABCD at around Rs.70 per sq. ft.  Other selections are also salable at different prices depending on the quality and selection.

Festival raw goat skins in Andhra Pradesh were sold at around Rs.200 and regular goat skins at around Rs.170 per piece. In popular raw skins centres like Miraj raw goat skins are sold at around Rs.200 and large skins at around Rs.220. While raw sheep skins in centres like Vijayanagaram and Kadappa are sold at around Rs.280, large skins in the same areas fetch Rs.300 and even more.

According to available reports, many tanners have either stopped or slowed down their purchases of raw skins due to closure of tanneries in Thuthipet area of Ambur and voluntary closure of tanneries for two months or so for maintenance in Vaniyambadi. One feels that it is a big blow to industrial growth and exports. Tanners as well as those connected with the industry are suffering very much. All necessary steps are being taken by the concerned people to see that their units are opened as early as possible.

FOREIGN TRENDS

There are reports that many Chinese importers of leather are delaying payments beyond tolerable limits and hence Indian exporters want to be cautious in dealing with them. To India particularly to Tamil Nadu leather exporters the Chinese market is not what it was before. It is learnt that many exporters are facing the problem of delayed payments from China. At the same time there are also reports of the U.S. and European customers, hitherto buying from China, turning to India for their requirements as they are not happy with the increasing prices there due to its labour problems, increased wages and other manufacturing costs. Indian leather and leather products prices are competitive now after the sharp depreciation of Indian Rupee during last year.

Many exporters here say that their exports will increase if the effluent problem is solved and tanneries are re-opened forthwith.

Exporters are quoting at around the following prices:

                                

                             S/C OR F/C GOAT LEATHERS 

Material	Size/sq. ft.	Substance	Selection	Price US$ per sq. ft. C&F
Goat upper leather	3/5 or 4/7	0.6/0.8 mm	ABC - 40/40/20%	2.75
Goat milled leather	4/7	0.6/0.8 mm	E/D -50/50%	1.70
Goat suede leather	4/7	0.6/0.8 mm	ABC Suede All Suede	2.50 2.25
Goat lining leather	3/5 or 4/7	0.5/0.7 mm	TR-1/2/3	1.60
	6/9	0.6/0.8 mm	TR-1/2/3	1.70

                                             

                                              F/C SHEEP LEATHERS

Material	Size/sq.ft.	Substance	Selection	Price US$ per sq. ft. C&F
Sheep Nappa leather for garments	5/8	0.6/0.8 mm	ABC	3.00
Sheep Upper leather for shoes	4/7	0.6/0.8 mm	ABC	2.75
Sheep lining leather	4/7	0.5/0.7 mm	TR-1	1.75
Sheep lining leather	5/8	0.6/0.8 mm	TR-1	1.85

INDIA INTERNATIONAL LEATHER FAIR (IILF) 2014

The IILF 2014 to be held at Chennai Trade Centre, Nandambakkam, Chennai from 1^st to 3^rd February, 2014 after its inauguration on 31^st January 2014 at 6 pm has attracted quite a large number of national and international participants from India and more than 20 foreign countries. There are indications of more overseas delegations and visitors this year. According to its organizers, during the fair last year business worth US$284.4 million was generated and two joint ventures were signed apart from many other achievements. This year it is expected to be much more than this. No doubt the IILF Chennai is the most important International leather fair in India.

(VMK in Indian Leather, February 2014)

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