Author(s): Majid Majeed Khanday

Abstract:
One of the major wood based industry is the Cricket bat industry of district Anantnag. The origin of this industry in Kashmir is supposed to be from Sialkot Pakistan. The technical know-how was imported from England. This trade flourished in those areas of Kashmir where raw material was substantially available. Those persons, who at that time were financially sound, established their units at Halmullah in Tehsil Bijbehara of District Anantnag. More and more people especially at Sangam, Halmullah, Sather and Bijbehara in district Anantnag got attracted towards this trade and established their own units. The Cricket bat industry in Kashmir is giving employment to thousands of people and collectively exports thousands of cricket bats per year. The cricket bat industry provides employment to large number of skilled, semi-skilled and un-skilled people. The industry has readily available raw material especially willow and poplar for manufacturing of cricket bats. But the latest infrastructure and technology of manufacturing cricket bats is not available to the manufacturers of the UT of Jammu and Kashmir. However, the unit holders along with their produce visit the Indian cities to sell their product directly in the market. The willow clefts are supplied in lacs of numbers to Jalandhar, Jammu and Meerut based cricket bat manufacturing units. It is worth mentioning here that almost 60% of the world production of cricket bats is done in India for which the willow is supplied from Kashmir. If the production would have been done in Jammu and Kashmir with the latest infrastructure and technology then how much this industry would have contributed towards GDP of Jammu and Kashmir which in turn would have given enormous boost to the economy of the Jammu and Kashmir. This would have created a lot of employment opportunities to the local youth.

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