The COVID-19 pandemic could be the last nail in the coffin of an Assam industrial town the British had renamed nine decades ago because of confusion with Noakhali in Bangladesh.
Residents fear Jagiroad, hit by a “business-stealing highway” and death of the industrial units, could soon become a ghost town after three locals out of 16 in Assam tested COVID-19 positive, forcing the local authorities to seal the town and adjoining the villages.
Jagiroad, about 60 km east of Guwahati, grew up as an industrial centre after the public-sector Assam Spun Silk Mill was set up in 1962. A cooperative jute mill, a polyester spinning mill and a cooperative sugar mill followed before Hindustan Paper Corporation’s Nagaon Paper Mill became the town’s marque plant in 1985.
The industrial clout made Jagiroad a popular pit stop for travellers between Guwahati and Kaziranga National Park and beyond in the Northeast. Rows of restaurants and dhabas along National Highway 37 barely managed to cater to the demand.
The scenario began changing as the industrial units closed one after the other because of poor management, issues of raw material and marketing. The transformation of the highway into a expressway enabling high-speed travel to next destination Nagaon made many eateries close shop.
“Jagiroad derived its name from Jagi village about 9 km away, where the first school of Morigaon district was established in 1933. But the place used to be called Naukhola until the British rulers changed the name to Jagiroad in the 1930s because of confusion,” said Tarun Talukdar, a cultural activist and retired principal of Jagi Higher Secondary College.
The British, he added, were forced to rename the place as cargo destined for Noakhali, now in Bangladesh, would at times reach Naukhola and vice versa.
Jagiroad had earned the tag of Northeast’s dried fish hub before the industries came. Munin Borthakur, who set up the first wholesale dried fish business in the mid-1950s, said long-term shutdowns including those during the Assam Agitation of 1979-1985 hardly impacted the market.
‘Backbone broken’
“We understand this lockdown is to keep the deadly virus from infecting us. But it has already come closer home, and getting over the stigma would take a long time for traders, many of whose backbones had already been broken by dipping commercial graph of the town,” Mr Borthakur told The Hindu .
