“Post ceasefire industrial, transportation activities resume in border States, labourers yet to return”

Impact of Operation Sindoor on industrial activity, goods transport, labor movement, and warehousing in India analyzed by experts.

Industrial activity and goods transport which had been impacted in the Indian states bordering Pakistan into the build-up to Operation Sindoor and during the conflict as well as in the following days, has now resumed with the ceasefire in place but normalcy is yet to be restored in the workforce as labourers who had fled to their native States in eastern India are yet to return in large numbers, said Vineet Agarwal, Managing Director, Transport Corporation of India Ltd (TCI Ltd) that operates its truck fleet in the impacted area as well as nationally.

“We saw supply chains getting disrupted, factories got shut, warehouses got shut because of the blackouts. And then subsequently, we also saw some amount of labour movement that happened away from the northern part to back to their hometowns in the east,” Mr Agarwal said in an interview. 

“We have also seen that dealers of automobiles not taken that much inventory since they knew that there’s a little bit of uncertainty. So business momentum would have taken a little bit of a hit also because there is a certain amount of cancellations that might have happened for business trips, events, and so on,” he said. 

Stating that supply chains were disrupted for a little while, he said it should come back because the supply chains were not as tight as it was in the past.

“The impact on sentiment is a little bit more [than infrastructure], and that would take a little longer to come back,” he said.

Emphasising that a lot of workers, both factory workers and manual labourers have started to come back already, he said people movement was “definitely slower”. 

He said labour outflow was seen in Punjab, Haryana, and Rajasthan and the seasonal sowing could be affected if return of labour was delayed, but state governments were reportedly working on this.