GS1 PYQ (Mains Answer Writing): Resource Based Manufacturing | Geography for UPSC CSE PDF Download

Can the strategy of regional resource-based manufacturing help in promoting employment in India? (UPSC GS1 Mains)
Introduction
A local resource-based approach applies a cost-effective use of local skills, enterprises, labour and materials in the infrastructure delivery process. The process optimizes the social and economicimpact of investments in Manufacturing by ensuring that these investments are channeled throughthe local economy, so creating job opportunities and stimulating local markets, entrepreneurshipand industry while safeguarding cost effectiveness, quality and sustainable asset delivery. 

Reason for Opting for local resource-based technologies: 

• Government development objectives aim to generate employment and income  opportunities for the local population and domestic construction industryThe infrastructure concerned requires relatively modest investments, e.g., rural roads,secondary and tertiary irrigation channels and small and medium-scale structures. 
• Local resources including labour, skills, enterprises and materials are available. 
• Scarcity of foreign exchange makes the use of imported inputs an economically unattractiveoption. 
• A significant proportion of the population is UN- or under-employed. 
• Wage levels are low. 

How it can help in promoting employment in India? 

• Local resource-based approach is to deliver public (and private) investments in infrastructure as ameans of expanding employment opportunities for the unemployed, raising productivity, providingsocial and economic infrastructure assets and facilities, permitting trade and generally improvingwell-being. 
• Given the relative scarcity of capital and skilled labour, and the relative abundance ofunskilled labour, countries with low incomes can rapidly achieve pro-poor growth byapplying employmentfriendly technologies in as many sectors as possible. This wouldrapidly increase the demand for unskilled and low-skilled labour. 
• Several investment programmes have a huge employment creation potential if delivered viaemployment-friendly technology and local enterprises. Investment in public infrastructureaccounts for as much as 40 to 60% of national public investment in most developingcountries. Public investment programmes therefore represent one of the few remaininggovernment policy instruments through which productive employment opportunities can bestimulated and more balanced economic and social development promoted. 
• Promotion of local resource-based approach in manufacturing is done in order to optimizetheir impact on poverty reduction in labour-surplus countries and provides technicalassistance for this purpose. 

Benefits of a local resource-based approach: 

• It enables higher delivery and maintenance rates of basic assets and services essentialfor socioeconomic development such as vital access roads, water supplies, markets andhealth facilities with the same level of investment and at comparable or better qualitystandards. 
• Creates jobs, particularly for the unskilled, poorer men and women within thecommunity. This results in the injection of incomes into the local communities, with theimmediate effect of increasing their purchasing power. This, in turn, results in improvingliving standards such as improved diets, ability to access socio-economic amenities suchas schools, clinics, etc. 
• Stimulates local entrepreneurship, community participation and local economic development with important income distribution effects. 
• Enables the involvement of the local private sector and industry, that is, contractors,suppliers and manufactures of local materials, tools and equipment. Hence nurtures anddevelops the local construction and manufacturing industry, retains investment locallyand saves on foreign exchange required for foreign imports. 
• Develops skills in the delivery process that can be used in other income generatingactivities, as well as in subsequent maintenance works. 
• Offers opportunities for employment creation, social reintegration, and the stimulation of local socio-economic development in countries emerging from either man-madecrises or natural disasters. In such countries governments have few macro-economictools at their disposal to revive their economies and to enable economic and social recovery. Public investment in infrastructure provides one such tool.

Conclusion 
Thus, Regional Development leads to the distribution of employment opportunities on anequitable basis and they are not let to confine only to a handful of states which are creationgaps in the per capital income among different regions.

Topics covered - Regional resource based Manufacturing, Secondary sector in India.