About 4,000 employees in 17 units in Oukhoo village of Pulwama contribute to 90% of pencil manufacturing in India
Promotion
Do you remember writing with those slender wooden pencils during your initial days of learning? These pencils have a nostalgic ability to transport us back in time to those good old school days.
But little do we know that the raw material for the majority of these pencils come from the modest Oukhoo village in Pulwama district of Kashmir.
The village holding 17 units and the 4,000 employees is scripting a new success story to make India Atmanirbhar (self-reliant).
Popularly termed as the “pencil village of India”, it even got a mention in PM Modi’s recent radio programme, Mann Ki Baat, for it has helped to reduce the dependency for pencil wood from other nations in the past few years.
“India used to import wood and pencil slats from China, Sri Lanka and Germany, but in recent years all these slats are made in India,” says Manzoor Ahmad Allaie, who…