CHENNAI: Industrialists in Tamil Nadu, one of the country’s top manufacturing destinations, believe the permanent closure of the Vedanta-Sterlite copper plant will not dent the state’s image as an investment destination but the circumstances of the shuttering should lead the government to evolve ways to monitor polluting industries and probe why the Sterlite issue had come to such a violent pass.The Tamil Nadu government permanently shut Sterlite Copper on Monday after three months of agitations against the plant, which locals said was causing environmental damage, turned violent last week, resulting in the death of 13 people after police opened fire on protestors. The Vedanta unit had announced a second smelter, which would have doubled its capacity of 4 lakh tonnes a year.Jairam Varadaraj, managing director of Coimbatore-based ELGI Equipments, which manufactures air compressors and automotive equipment, said the events of the Sterlite case may not be reason enough to discredit Tamil Nadu’s viability as an investment destination. “I don’t know if something like this will beg the larger question (of whether investments will stop coming to Tamil Nadu). We are inside Tamil Nadu and we know the circumstances. However, for people outside Tamil Nadu there could be larger messages from this incident, but all this is a part of the game.”Lakshmi Narayanan, one of the founders of software exporter Cognizant, said he was more interested in the options in front of a government faced with a factory like the Sterlite copper smelter. “What kind of possibilities exist when a government is faced with a situation as seen in the case of Sterlite? What do plants elsewhere in the world do? What are the options available in clear, quantitative forms for somebody to decide? I am not much concerned about the outcome, but the process of evaluation and a conclusion based on that is not available, which requires a lot of research.”For Tamil Nadu, the closure comes at a time when manufacturing investments are sliding. Actual fresh investments in the state fell three-fold to 1,574 crore in 2017 from 4,793 crore in 2016, according to data from the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion. Industrialists who did not want to be named suggest that weak governance and perceived political instability may have contributed to the fall.However, even in Maharashtra — the most industrialised state in the country — investments dropped from 40,588 crore in 2016 to 18,993 crore in 2017, according to the same report.While the experience of the Vedanta unit calls for a watchful eye on the industrial climate for prospective investors, industrialists believe it will still be episodic, and not a trend-setter for the future. R Dinesh, one of family scions managing the $7-billion TVS Group, said, “No, this will not have a lingering impact, because business decisions are based on the experience of the business community on the whole, not an individual company”.The question of India turning a net importer from a net exporter in FY19 looms large if the Vedanta Group company remains shut.In FY18, Sterlite contributed to 48% of the country’s refined copper production, according to Urvisha H Jagasheth, analyst at CARE Ratings.