Earlier in the week, craftsman Aslam received his first order in the last two months — to make 100 brass peg measures to be exported to Europe. The 40-year-old craftsman on Moradabad’s Lal Masjid Road clinched the deal at Rs 70 per piece from an exporter who gave him a fixed design for these bar accessories.As Aslam concentrates on his job, vowing to give the measures a perfect finish and deliver them on time, the government’s demonetisation policy still haunts him.“We have been devastated by demonetisation. For two months (since November 8), there was no work. Most of the household factories here have shut down. Most of us have become unemployed,” says the craftsman and father of four children aged between 2 and 14, narrating stories about his growing nervousness as days pass, savings dwindle and debts mount. Aslam is now prepared to leave his “creativity” behind if he manages a “petty job” with a fixed salary.“Mujhe Dilli mein hi kuchh chhota mota kaam mein laga do (Kindly place me in some petty jobs in Delhi),” he repeatedly pleads to this writer.A small brass factory in Moradabad that has survived demonetisation. A large number of karkhanas have shut shop post November 8.Along the bylanes of Lal Masjid and Bada Shah Safa area in Moradabad, a sense of hopelessness was palpable among craftsmen who in ordinary circumstances would swear by a profession passed down generations.“In this area, there used to be 25 karkhanas (factories), each employing three to seven artisans. After demonetisation, hardly three-four have survived,” says Tariq Naim, a craftsman who runs his factory from Panache Home in Bada Shah Safa area.Naim, a commerce graduate, narrates some of the hurdles faced by small factory owners in his neighbourhood: dwindling demand and the restrictions on weekly cash withdrawals. In fact, cash is a must for buying raw material, as the sellers ask for a premium if the payment is not made in cash, they say.“The Union budget should give concessions to the sectors that are hit most by demonetisation. We hardly have demand for our door handles as the entire construction industry is hit,” says Naim, as he works on an Apple MacBook. The brass door handles that he makes weigh 8 to 10 kg per piece and are used by real estate companies that build high-end villas.So, will Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley extend some sops in his February 1 budget that will work as a balm for demonetisation pains suffered by Aslam, Naim and thousands of other small and big entrepreneurs in Moradabad and other industry zones in Uttar Pradesh — the state that will vote next month?As this article is being written, the Election Commission of India is yet to take a call on whether the February 1 budget needs to be postponed in the wake of assembly elections, the first phase of which will take place on February 4.Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on Friday decided to hear a plea on January 20 regarding advancing the budget by a month, but indicated that it found nothing wrong.In poll-bound states, as this writer witnessed in Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad and Uttarakhand’s Pantnagar, there’s a glimmer of hope that the budget in the midst of an election campaign will directly or indirectly result in a shower of more sops than usual.“We expect the budget to give sops for hilly states, something that will immensely benefit us,” says GS Rawat, regional manager of Uttarakhand’s state public sector undertaking called SIDCUL, which supervises Pantnagar industrial town, among others.Pantnagar, home to units of big corporations such as Tata Motors , Bajaj Motors, Ashok Leyland, Britannia Industries Nestle India , Titan Industries and Dabur India saw some post-demonetisation turbulence, but many of those units had scaled down production even before demonetisation.“What the budget should do is create an environment for a low interest rate regime so that the demand for our products go up,” says an additional general manager of a company, requesting anonymity.For car and two-wheeler companies in Pantnagar, the impact of demonetisation was limited to labour and truck management. Some of the units had scaled down production two-three years earlier, mainly because of low automobile demand in the wake of a prolonged high interest rate regime.Further, pathetic road conditions and last year’s political instability in Uttarakhand — the toppling of Chief Minister Harish Rawat-led Congress government, imposition of President’s Rule and the reinstatement of Rawat as CM after the Supreme Court’s intervention — took the shine off Pantnagar’s hitherto robust investment climate built on the state’s peaceful environment and labour force.The state government has, however, created land banks in two adjoining places — 803 acres at Nepa to woo environmentalfriendly industries and 1,000 acres at Khurpia, which will be linked to the proposed Amritsar-Kolkata Industrial Corridor. The big question is whether there will be further incentives in the budget for large investors in industrial corridors, something that will bring in new investment to the hill state.Like in Pantnagar’s industrial units, the large and organised export houses in Moradabad too were only marginally impacted by demonetisation.“We have not lost any business but, yes, we had to delay the delivery of some orders,” says Raghav Gupta, managing director of CL Gupta Exports Ltd, the largest export house in Moradabad, employing 5,000 people and with an annual turnover of Rs 360 crore.Gupta does not expect any major concessions in the Union budget, but keeping in mind the labour-intensive nature of the sector, the relaxation in provident fund norms for handicraft exporters — extended to textiles and apparel sectors last year — could be offered to handicrafts as well, he reckons. The government under a scheme decided to bear the employer’s contribution of 12% of provident fund for new employees in the garment industry earning less than Rs 15,000 per month, for the first three years.Pantnagar industrial town is hit more by high interest rate regime than by demonetisationAs the FM reads out his budget speech on February 1 just ahead of elections, he will possibly keep in mind the list of industrial hubs that fall in the election battleground — Pantnagar (automobiles), Moradabad (brass), Agra (footwear), Aligarh (locks), Kanpur (textiles and leather), Ludhiana (bicycles and garments), among others.No one knows what the North Block mandarins have prepared so far for the budget, but you don’t need to be a punter to wager that this will be an “election budget” — with as much politics as economics, or even more of the former.