Post-ban, Maggi plant workers now work as rickshaw pullers, tea vendors in Uttarakhand

The Maggi ban has affected not just families who are pondering over options for a quick evening snack. It has left unhappy a large number of workers who have lost their jobs after a production unit stopped functioning in Rudrapur in Uttarakhand.

The Times of India had reported on Sunday that about 1,100 contractual workers at the Nestle plant in Rudrapur have been forced to take up jobs as rickshaw pullers, tea vendors and construction labourers after production was halted owing to the three-month ban on the product in Uttarakhand. TOI also said in its report that if production does not restart in the near future, many of them will be forced to return to their villages.

Further, even companies which work as suppliers to manufacturing the instant noodles have been hit. According to a report in The Hindu Business Line,   Paras Spices Pvt Ltd, a company which supplies spices to Nestle, asked about 200 temporary workers not to report to work in June, or to report twice or thrice in a week.

In the same month, a contract worker at the Rudrapur production had committed suicide less than two weeks after the Uttarakhand High Court imposed a ban on production and sale of the popular snack, as reported by Hindustan Times .

Meanwhile, the Maggi fiasco has become a case study at the India Research Centre of Harvard Business School, according to a report in the Economic Times . Contrary to other business models which have been the object of admiration at Harvard, this episode is being reviewed to look at the missteps which led to product’s removal from Indian markets. The Ivy-league institution seems to be in a hurry to put together the case study. The study may be ready in a month, as against a period of nine months that is normally taken for completing such case studies.