Over 100 and counting: Govt policies for industrial sector
schemes for backward area development and for products like textiles. The frequency of policies and schemes has expanded in the ’90s as the share of manufacturing in the economy has receded.
These policies are repeated by the state governments. West Bengal, for instance, has 12 policies for micro and small industries. Tamil Nadu has eight policies for small industries, although it has introduced a single window clearance system for industries.
Arpita Mukherjee, professor at ICRIER, agreed that most of these policies have become superfluous and even contradict each other. “India has not been able to attract investment in manufacturing despite several such incentives and schemes. A study conducted by us found that in food and logistics supply chain there are over 50 schemes for investment promotion, across states and the Centre. Despite that, some Indian companies (Dabur) have set up operations in Sri Lanka after evaluating different state policies in India,” she said.
Economist Bibek Debroy, who has once headed a government committee to weed out outdated Acts, said the reason why the service sector escaped the glut of policy-making was that states had little data on the sector and were also fiscally crippled. According to him, at the central level, since most of the service sector needed few support systems, policies, except for those like software technology parks and the special economic zones, were few and far between.
Be the first to comment.
