Sunil Dobhal, 50, is one of 100-odd HMT workers who have been sitting on a dharna for months at the 30-year-old factory that was set up to make mechanical components primarily for watches in Ranibagh, in the Nainital district of Uttarakhand. There is no TV crew, no reporter, not even police personnel present on the spot, as workers shout slogans and hold “Save HMT” placards at one end of the 92-acre sprawling campus surrounded by hills and rivulets. The electricity connection was disconnected two years ago due to nonpayment of a `12-lakh bill, and the factory that once also produced parts such as pins, spacers, brackets for the fighter plane Sukhoi-30 and other defence products, apart from the iconic watches, is virtually paralysed today.The main gates are closed but the employees take a side door into the factory to manufacture some watch components with the help of a 50 kilovolt generator set.By 1990, the Ranibagh factory had begun producing quartz analog watches and hand-wound watches for men, and in one good year turned out a million of them. This is HMT’s fifth watch factory, in addition to four others — two in Bengaluru and one each in Srinagar and Tumkur; collectively, the watches these units manufactured earned HMT the undisputed and revered tag of ‘Timekeeper to the Nation.’Today, time has all but ground to a halt at HMT, and its keepers, the employees, have not been paid for 16 months. They’re unlikely to be employed for much longer. In December last year, the Cabinet of the National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre gave an in-principle nod to close down five sick public sector companies.Three of these are HMT units — HMT Bearings, HMT Watches and HMT Chinar Watches. As you read this, the department of heavy industries is giving the final touches to five Cabinet notes — one for each company — to formalise the closure process, rendering Dobhal and 2,681 other employees of these five companies jobless.The two non-HMT companies that will also be shut down once the Cabinet gives its approval are Tungabhadra Steel Products and Hindustan Cables.For his part, Dobhal is in no mood to throw in the towel. “I will fight till the end. Why should I accept any voluntary retirement package when I have eight more years to retire? Why should I suffer because of bad management and poor marketing strategies,” asks Dobhal, a veteran in the heat treatment and polishing division who had a role in HMT’s marketing vertical as well.Dobhal’s questions may be valid, but he would be the first to concede in private that the time to ask those questions is long gone. Going by the sequence of events — the government’s in-principle nod, its statements in Parliament, and inter-ministerial consultations — any reversal in the closure process is unlikely now. The ball is clearly in the court of the government, which now has the daunting task of getting down to the brass tacks of the closure: persuading reluctant employees to call it a day, smartly and quickly settle legal disputes (about 40 HMT cases are now in court) and efficiently monetising the residual assets (the five companies collectively own 1,400 acres of land). After all, shuttering these five central PSUs could well be a template for the government to follow for other perennially loss-making, non-strategic state-owned enterprises.To be sure, the government needs to also arrive at a robust formula to decide which of the 65 sick central PSUs need to go the HMT way.Else, questions will inevitably be raised as to why HMT Watches, with a relatively small annual loss of `233 crore has to face the guillotine when other deep-in-red PSU behemoths like Air India (net loss in 2013-14: `5,380 crore) and BSNL (a loss of `7,085 crore) live to see another day.“The government is taking a cue from the 14th Finance Commission , which recommends that lossmaking companies in nonstrategic sectors can be considered for closure,” says a government official connected with the process. This means companies such as Hindustan Photo Films, Fertilizer Corporation of India, Scooters India and Tyre Corporation of India (which earlier had a failed disinvestment bid) could well be next in line (assuming of course shutting down the first lot of five is a largely smooth process); whereas perennially sick companies such as Air India or BSNL may well survive thanks to the interpretation of what’s strategic and what not.The government, however, may not float the idea of closing many more HMT-like companies because of practical bottlenecks.For example, parliamentary approval is a must in shuttering companies such as Scooters India and Tyre Corporation of India (those subsequently taken over by acts of Parliament); so the government may not touch these companies with a barge-pole given its lack of numbers in the Rajya Sabha. Nor can it attempt to put up the shutters on giants like Air India as such sensitive decisions may swing public opinion against the government.So, was HMT a soft target? “Perhaps,” concedes an official connected to the development.“Except for those working at the Ranibagh factory, most of the workers in HMT companies are nearing retirement. Many of them have written to us urging for an early closure so that they can take the benefits of our liberal VRS package”.The package is somewhat attractive as it is based on the 2007 pay scale and not on the 1992 one. It may sound odd but the HMT employees’ salary is still based on the 1992 pay scale, under which the minimum basic pay is just `1,880 per month, not even comparable to the daily wagers benefiting from the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.HMT group chairman S Girish Kumar says HMT employees opting for VRS stand to pocket between `20 lakh and `55 lakh as a one-time compensation, which may appear attractive considering most employees have not been paid since April 2014.After shutting down three companies, the three remaining HMT entities are likely to be restructured. “We are planning to merge the three into one entity, a slimmer one with 1,800 employees (as against 4,480 today). We will focus on machine tools. The watch segment may remain in a very limited manner,” says Kumar.Bhagat Singh Koshyari, former Uttarakhand chief minister and a current Lok Sabha MP from BJP, says he recently made an appeal to defence minister Manohar Parrikar to rescue HMT’s Ranibagh factory by allowing a defence PSU or an ordnance factory to take it over. The factory workers who this writer met last week gave a list of defence products that have been made in the past — pins, spacers, brackets for the Sukhoi-30 and Jaguar planes, inserts for bullets and the like. Two months ago, two teams — one each from Bharat Electronics Limited and an ordnance factory —undertook a preliminary survey of the men and machines of the factory.“We have some great assets across our factories. But selling or transferring those to another government agency will arise only after the current VRS process ends,” says Kumar, ruling out any possibility of reversing the closure.Many of the agitating workers know that they are fighting a losing battle. But fight they will, till the end. “Let’s Make in India, not Unmake in India”, shouts MN Joshi, a 55-year-old employee who insists he will refuse a VRS. The only solace for Joshi and his ilk is that the king-sized HMT watch at the entrance of the main factory is still ticking!