 For more videos and people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. For the first time in India, more than 10 lakh entrepreneurs of micro, medium and small enterprises went on a one-day strike across the country on 20th December 2021 against the steep increase in the prices of raw materials. After facing severe setbacks due to demonetization, ST implementation of GST and the ill-conceived COVID-19 lockdown, the MSMEs are gasping due to an increased production cost. Various organizations in the MSME sector have been seeking the attention of the union government to find solutions for the pressing issues of increased input cost and seeking financial aid for several months. It is a very sad day to witness the MSME entrepreneurs have to resort to closing their factory for a day to wake up the union government to listen to their problems. It has never been heard of in the past. Employees have gone on strike, but this is the first time employers have shut their factories down to convey their displeasure, agony, pain and the problems. If the government does not save them now, we can never see them again. It is not about the problem alone. It is about listening to the problems, listening to their views, listening to their issues. That is more important today. What is required? Affected severely by the policies of the union government and the in-plan lockdown in March 2020 and now by the steep increase in raw material costs, the All India Council of Association of MSMEs with around 170 organizations in the MSME sector have participated in the protest. The reason why we all made a peaceful demonstration is to draw the attention of the government just for the first priority is raw material, which is very, very important for us, for any small-scale industry. Without raw material, we cannot survive and usually raw material costs will vary from our product cost from 60% to 70% maximum and sometimes 50% also. Now in the present stages, it is crossing 80% and the entire value addition we are not able to absorb in the market and all MSMEs are suffering like anything and our working capital is also eroded and after pandemic COVID also, we all survived through emergency create lending only. Now due to this raw material prices, because the whole lot is now vanished. All the working capital, what we were having all due to raw material price, it has been absorbed and I will tell you two things is happening now. Due to this high cost of raw material, there is a slowdown in the economy also in November, December. We are not getting the required orders and we don't have the required working capital to operate. Before what we were operating, now only 50% we are all able to operate and the bankers are also saying as your working capital is, last year the turnover is less due to COVID, they are not ready to lend us more also due to this raw material prices. So both sides, cascading effort is very severe and our first objective is to bring back the raw material prices to April 2020 level. This is what we have requested the Honorable Prime Minister to intervene and as all the raw material suppliers are very big players in the field and we are all very very small and we have got so much affected and we depend on our survival, it's very difficult now. So what is our requirement? Please kindly intervene and have a talk with them, call us for our discussion and have some mutual concern and see to that the raw material prices which is the pre COVID level so that the inflation also will be controlled and the demand will also increase, this is one point. The second point is allow import of all type of raw material, remove the whole anti tapping duty so that the production bought the government has given the raw material that can be eliminated so that the level playing field will be there and when the demand supply is there then at least the undue increase of raw material will be controlled. From the supply chain it moves from the factory side then to the next level and before it reaches the small scale industry again there is a huge rise in the raw material prices. So this is not actually been observed in the market and we are finding it very difficult to sell our own product then if in the supply chain in many sides also there is a problem and those are supplying to all the public sector companies, government orders there is no absolutely price escalation classes. So then what can we do? Everywhere we have been hit one side after pandemic just we are able to survive and now due to this we have got affected and hope so we are expecting a very quick solution that is the reason we all closed down for one day across India. MSME entrepreneurs from more than 10 states participated in the demonstration Tamil Nadu and Karnataka saw massive participation in the protest and the strike. The MSME units in the two important hubs Chennai and Coimbatore came to a standstill on the protest day. Across India we estimate more than 10 lakh industries have participated in this and all the major associations across India were caused in Tamil Nadu, entire Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, entire Karnataka like Belgam, even Peenya industrial states, Mysore and all the industrial parts in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Pune, Gujarat where all the industries are concentrated fully, almost 7 to 10 states have been covered. The livelihood of the huge workforce directly and indirectly employed in the sector is also in trouble because of the crisis. MSMEs employ roughly around approximately 12 crore people across India and we are all interdependent on one among us and it will be more than 40 crore people, one third of population. This is what we say from MSME. We hope the concerned ministries will call the respective raw material buyers and have a dialogue with them and give us a possible solution.