2Assistant Professor, Institute for Studies in Industrial Development, New Delhi, Email: surya@isid.org.in
1This paper is a part of a major research project titled “Spatial Dynamics of Manufacturing Landscape in India – A District Level Comparative Analysis of Pre and Post Reform Contexts,” sponsored by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), New Delhi. It is also available as working paper No. 256 of ISID, New Delhi that does not carry any ISSN number.
This paper focuses on two key issues: one, to analyse the possible changes in the number of manufacturing units and employment within aspirational districts, and two, to find how these variables correlate with the socioeconomic attributes envisaged in the Aspirational District Programme. Data from the Third (1990) and Sixth (2013) Economic Censuses at the enterprise level have been used to provide a comprehensive picture of both formal and informal manufacturing activities in these districts. The findings reveal a decline in the growth of the manufacturing workforce in many of these districts between 1990 and 2013. Low technology manufacturing is predominant and over time its share has been gradually increasing. Most of these districts have attained moderate levels of specialisation in each of the manufacturing types. More than 99 per cent of the units in these districts are micro units with 0-10 workers, while only 0.1 per cent of units have 100 or more workers. Over half of these large units (100 or more workers) are located in three districts: Virudhunagar in Tamil Nadu, and Haridwar and Udham Singh Nagar in Uttarakhand. As far as the relationship between manufacturing score and aspirational score is concerned, the findings indicate that the latter has a determining influence on the former.
Backward, Aspirational districts, Manufacturing, Economic census
