Traditional unskilled and network products industries should focus on job creation in India: Economic survey

The Economic Survey 2019-20 suggests two industry groups that hold the greatest potential for job creation - traditional unskilled and Network Products (NP) industries.

Given our comparative advantage in labor-intensive activities and the imperative of creating employment for a growing labour force, these two groups of industries hold the greatest potential for export growth and job creation, it said.

Firstly, the survey point sout theat there is a significant unexploited export potential in India’s traditional unskilled labour-intensive industries such as textiles, clothing, footwear, and toys. 

Second, India has huge potential to emerge as a major hub for final assembly in a range of products, referred to as “network products” (NP), the survey points out. The GVCs in these industries are controlled by leading MNEs such as Apple, Samsung, Sony, etc. within “producer-driven” networks.

In general, these products are not produced from start to finish within a given country; instead, countries specialize in particular tasks or stages of the good’s production sequence. Within the production network, each country specializes in a particular fragment of the production process, said the survey.