Although Gujarat has become the number two state in the country in industrial investment, this has not led to any significant employment growth, an official survey has shown. The survey by the Department of Industries has shown that almost 100,000 jobs were in fact lost last year, although Gujarat received the largest investment after Maharashtra.New investment recorded a phenomenal increase of 84 per cent from Rs 398.67 billion in 1994-95 to Rs 732.86 billion in 1995-96. But employment, which stood at 855,000, rose by less than 1 per cent to only 862,000 during the period, mostly due to induction of new technology and downsizing by companies. During 1996-97, employment again rose to 957,000, but in 1998, there was no substantial rise in employment.A Labour Department official said it was not easy to explain why an increase in the number of factories, from 19,381 at the end of 1997 to 19,565 at the end of 1998, did not engender any significant rise in jobs.
The paradox is that the total value ofGujarat's industrial production rose to Rs 848.08 billion in 1995-96 from Rs 564.69 billion in 1994-95, a 50 per cent increase. The chemical and petroleum sector alone contributed about 37 per cent of the total value.
Textiles, which made the maximum contribution earlier, dropped to 8.32 per cent, even though this sector topped in terms of number of factories and employment generation. Gujarat has 10.23 per cent of factories in India, generating 9.53 per cent of the employment and 16.07 per cent in terms of product value.
Well-known economist V Parekh said the gap between investment and employment generation appears mainly because the chemical and pharmaceutical sector, which is now dominating the new investments, is not labour intensive. "The government, in a way, has failed to focus on other sectors where new jobs could be generated in a big number, such as mining, exploration of minerals, fisheries, town-based small industries," he said.
Sources in the Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation(GIDC) say that in keeping with its intense industrialisation plans, the corporation has projects for seven more mega estates by 2010, spread over 20,000 hectares with Rs 90 billion of private investment, apart from government investment. Chemical parks will be built in four of these estates where, according to the GIDC, modern pollution control technologies will be established. An official of the Hindustan Oil Exploration Company said an investment of Rs 100 billion (Rs 10 billion every year) to explore Gujarat's mineral wealth of lignite, bauxite, natural gas and oil is needed. This would create more than a million jobs every year, he said.
But according to non-governmental organisations (NGOs), these industrial estates would only add to the current high level of pollution. "Going by past experience and false promises made by the GIDC, these new chemical estates will only increase the pollution levels in air and water in the state," a spokesman of an environment NGO said.
-IANS
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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