UPSC Mains 2019 GS1 Q6: Can Regional Resource-Based Manufacturing Promote Employment in India?

Resource-based manufacturing builds industry around locally available raw material: agricultural produce, minerals, or forest products. Food processing, textiles, and leather are classic examples.

These industries tend to be more labour-intensive than heavy, capital-intensive industry. The same investment typically creates more jobs when it goes into resource-based manufacturing.

Locating manufacturing near the raw material also puts it near the rural labour force that produced or handles it, avoiding costly relocation of either.

India’s MSME sector includes most resource-based manufacturing. It is the country’s second-largest employer after agriculture, supporting well over 100 million jobs.

Resource-based manufacturing near agricultural zones can employ rural workers directly, offering non-farm income and reducing pressure to migrate to distant cities for work.

The One District One Product initiative identifies and promotes a resource-based product unique to each district, building a recognisable, exportable specialty around what that district already produces well.

SFURTI supports khadi, coir, and handicraft clusters. Grouping small producers into clusters lets them share costly infrastructure, like common facility centres, that no single small unit could afford alone.

Seasonal raw material supply can create seasonal underemployment, low value addition caps income growth, and small units often struggle to access formal credit and modern technology.

Explain why resource-based manufacturing suits an employment-promotion strategy (labour intensity, rural proximity, existing scale), cite supporting schemes like ODOP and SFURTI, then weigh the strategy’s real limitations before concluding.