Regional bias seeps into small-scale industries, employment

With a few clusters of growth acting as magnets, the ancillary micro, small, and medium enterprises too gravitate to these centres, thus fostering the bias. More significantly, what would set the planners worrying is the skewed investment profile getting reflected in the jobs created as well.

The document says that while the total investments lined up would generate over seven lakh jobs in the Golden Corridor - between Ahmedabad and Vapi - north Gujarat and Saurashtra would manage employment for only one lakh each.

The reason can be seen in the setting up of smaller units near the infrastructure-rich clusters following the investment pattern. Most of the micro, small, and medium enterprises are gravitating around established centres like Vadodara, Surat and Bharuch - the same regions that attract larger projects as part of investment plans of industry and government.

As the Golden Corridor corners 46 per cent of the total investments in the large projects, the three districts of Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Surat account for close to half the small scale units registered in the state till date.

Also, of the 3,593 micro units registered between October 2006 and March 2007 as per the document, generating a total of 36,150 jobs, 1,604 are in Surat alone with over 15,000 jobs. The hub of Ahmedabad follows with 673 units and over 6,000 jobs.

Against this, there are eight districts- Dangs, Patan, Banaskantha, Surendranagar, Navsari, Narmada, Anand, and Kheda - that have had no large projects commissioned till date, with Rajkot, Junagadh, Panchmahals, Bhavnagar and Mehsana getting one per cent or less of the total investments that are in various stages of implementation.