When protests broke out in factories in the Noida area on Monday, part of India’s National Capital Region (NCR) bordering New Delhi, several factory owners said they saw it coming.
Ten days earlier, labor unrest in neighboring Haryana had already followed a similar pattern: demonstrations outside factories, attacks on vehicles and buildings, and heavy deployment of local police. However, there was a quick move by the government, with an agreement to raise the minimum wage by 35 percent for the area.
Both regions are deeply tied to export-driven manufacturing, where factories supply global brands and retailers. The Noida cluster, one of India’s largest apparel sourcing hubs with an estimated turnover of around $6 billion, spans more than 4,500 factories. When protests began this week, they quickly escalated into violence, with workers torching vehicles, throwing stones, and reportedly vandalizing factory premises as they demanded a wage revision on the same terms secured in Haryana.
Workers said the immediate trigger was the rising cost of living, compounded by shortages and rising prices of cooking gas cylinders, which they linked largely to the war in Iran. Maintaining basic living standards had become increasingly difficult on the present wages, they said.
The Uttar Pradesh government moved quickly as well, announcing a 21 percent interim wage increase on Tuesday, effective retroactively from April 1. With the revision, unskilled workers in Noida will now earn approximately $147 per month, while semi-skilled and skilled workers will also see proportional increases.
Despite the announcement, protests have continued across several industrial pockets in the region, with more than half of factories reportedly shut during the early part of the week.
Workers have continued to press for parity with Haryana’s higher wage increase of around 35 percent, arguing that minimum monthly pay should begin at roughly $216 to reflect inflation and rising living costs. They have also demanded stricter enforcement of overtime rules, including double pay for overtime hours.
As police acted quickly, dispersing mobs, acting to control violence, along with making arrests, workers made it clear that they were aiming for a bigger increase. Questions around contract labor practices have also come into sharper focus amidst the unrest, as well as the use of social media in fanning violence.
Lalit Thukral, president, Noida Apparel Export Cluster (NAEC) told Sourcing Journal that inflationary pressures had helped trigger the situation and emphasized that the unrest had been intensified by misinformation. “The workers are suffering because of inflation; they are not interested in creating violence. It is the mob mentality that sets it off,” he said, attributing the violence to fake news and viral WhatsApp messaging.
Local police too, have stated that false posts circulating in WhatsApp groups, including claims of worker deaths and exaggerated reports of violence and arrests, have contributed to the escalation of unrest. While tracking down the sources, they have also noted that these are ways to destabilize the industry.
The Noida cluster remains a major export base, and manufacturers have warned that rising costs and continued instability could leave them with no option but to consider closures if the situation persists.
Sudhir Srivastava, vice president of the Noida Entrepreneurs Association, said manufacturers were being squeezed from multiple directions.
“Manufacturing companies are bearing heavy losses—with global pressures in terms of orders, energy costs and then the local unrest worsening the financial strain,” he said, estimating losses in the range of $200 million to $320 million per day across the region.
Other manufacturers told Sourcing Journal that further wage increases could accelerate a shift in orders to competing sourcing hubs such as Bangladesh and Vietnam. “We have been dealing with a whole year of pressures due to the U.S. tariff hike, and a host of other issues including rising raw material prices. Any further increase in costs will be too much for our companies to bear,” said a factory owner in the area, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The comparison between wage increases in Haryana and Noida has become a central reference point for workers, though Thukral said the industrial structure in the two regions is not directly comparable. He added that many units in Noida are micro, small, and medium enterprises operating on thin margins.
“Our plan is to continue growth, and we believe there will be resolution,” Thukral said, referring to longer-term expansion plans for the region. He is leading the development of a 150-acre apparel park along the Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Area (YEIDA), which envisions around 125 factories and is expected to generate up to 300,000 jobs while significantly increasing apparel exports from the region.
Meanwhile, the rollout of India’s new four labor codes, intended to replace a patchwork of older laws, formally began on April 1, though implementation depends on individual states finalizing their own rules.
In the wake of the unrest, the Uttar Pradesh Wage Board announced it will hold its first formal hearing in the first week of May 2026 to finalize what it called a “permanent and fair minimum wage structure for industrial workers.”
Union leaders said they would push for wage parity with Haryana to prevent migration of labor to higher-paying states, along with the regularization of contract workers who currently lack the benefits of permanent staff, and the withdrawal of police cases filed against around 2,500 workers accused in connection with this week’s violence.
“It is cheaper for factories to hire contract workers and avoid responsibility toward the employee,” said Naim Ahmed, district secretary, All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC).
Elamaram Kareem, general secretary, Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), said that nearly 80 percent of workers in the region are employed on contract terms and should have better access to wage revisions, medical benefits, and social security protections.
Government spokespersons said some union activity appeared politically motivated and aimed at resisting the central labor reforms that have been a point of contention in recent months.
Thukral reiterated concerns over outside influence in the unrest. “In Sector 63 the people who broke the windows of the buildings were from outside. These cannot be broken by normal stones. They brought big stones with them. Those were outsiders. They were not workers,” he said.
The question now is how far the unrest will spread, and whether it becomes a deeper disruption for India’s export manufacturing sector. Export figures for March 2026 showed a decline of 14.02 percent over the previous year, with textile exports declining by 9.91 percent, and apparel exports by 18.99 percent, according to figures by the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry.
“We trust our workers,” Thukral said. “The government has increased the wages and this is needed because they are suffering from the situation. But manufacturers are also worrying about survival. It’s quite a balancing act.”
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