MICA INDUSTRY- Profitable Stagnation

MICA INDUSTRY Profitable Stagnation Arun Sinha THERE were 808 mica mines in 1961; today there are about a hundred of them. Average daily employment during this period has slumped from 30,000 to a mere 5,000. Production too has been steadily . falling; from 7,804 tonnes in 1971, it declined to 5,784 tonnes in 1975. Mica Syndicate, a .state enterprise, owns 3,200 acres of mine squares but in the last twelve years it has worked only a hundred acres, and that too most unsatisfactorily. A whole industry is collapsing; thousands of workers have been retrenched; and yet nobody seems worried about it.