manufacturing

Declining growth and a stagnating employment share of manufacturing in a high-growth regime in India are disconcerting, given the pride of place assumed by manufacturing as the "engine of growth." The sustainability of high growth is linked intrinsically to a trajectory that creates gainful employment. This paper argues that the manufacturing sector, which recorded declining employment elasticity in the organised sector, will not be able to mend the gap between growth and employment. Rather the goal of rejuvenating manufacturing has to be contextualised in a larger strategy of full employment with interventions related to demand structures, technology, size structure of firms, as well as a calibrated engagement with the global market.

Since 1980-81, manufacturing sector output has grown at 7 per cent per year, with economic reforms making little difference to the trend in the 1990s. But growth has decelerated over the last seven years, after peaking in 1995-96. Why is this so? The reforms have narrowly focused on policy-induced restrictions on supply, ignoring the demand constraint due to the cut in public infrastructure investment since the late 1980s, and indifferent agricultural performance in the 1990s. These issues have to be squarely addressed to revive industrial growth, and to reap the benefits of the investment boom in organised manufacturing in the last decade.

Government policies on the fertiliser sector have been uncertain and inconsistent in the past decades, resulting in a growing subsidy burden and distortion of the optimal ratio of N P K consumption, especially after partial decontrol. Several studies and commissions have presented their conclusions on the retention pricing scheme, plant capacity assessments and subsidy reduction. These include among others, total decontrol of the sector in a time-bound manner. But political compulsions are likely to determine the vigour and pace of reforms in the fertiliser sector.

Shankar Gopal, in ‘American AntiGlobalisation Movement’ (EPW, August 25-31), forcefully argues that American groups protesting in Seattle in 1999 often ignored the concerns of developing nations about the inclusion of a labour rights ‘social clause’ in trade agreements. Too often, concerns of economic protectionism expressed by developing nations’ governments and trade unions were dismissed as elite driven and overly nationalistic. No doubt this is true. At the same time, however, I believe that activists and scholars in the developing world who are engaged with these issues also need to question their own assumptions about the motivations behind western support for a social clause. By sticking firmly to conventional wisdom (on both sides), unintended and strange political alliances are formed that cannot be helpful for workers. Instead, a new international dialogue needs to take place about how trade might be used to improve the lives of workers everywhere.

This paper analyses the trends in growth and efficiency in the utilisation of resources in the Indian manufacturing industry before and after the introduction of economic reforms. It uses a comparative analysis of all-India figures with Gujarat, one of the most industrially developed states of the country. The study shows that both the organised and unorganised sectors in Gujarat seemed to be doing better than the all-India average in terms of growth of value added. Growth in the manufacturing sector in Gujarat was also more efficient than average all-India growth after the reforms were introduced. Gujarat's strategy of physical infrastructure development, leading to industrialisation, has been the main reason for the growth of the state's manufacturing sector.