Rural Unorganised Manufacturing Enterprises in Assam: Some Aspects of Size, Structure, Growth, and Productivity in the Reform Era

The present study aims to analyse the performance of the rural unorganised manufacturing in Assam in terms of number of enterprises, employment and value added, structural changes, employment elasticity, and labour productivity, both at aggregated and disaggregated industry level. The analysis has brought out that the rural unorganised manufacturing in the state has been undergoing considerable structural change over the years; the share of household-based enterprises has been declining, while that of the establishments has been increasing. At the disaggregated industry level, however, the sector continues to be predominated by a set of agro-based industries such as food and beverages, textiles, and wood products. The sector has been decelerating over the years; the growth rate of output has been decelerating, while growth rate of enterprises and employment has been negative during 1994-95 to 2010-11, which is mainly due to sharp deceleration of the OAMEs segment, otherwise the establishments segment has achieved a relatively high growth. Across industry groups, except machinery and electrical, metal products, and transport and equipment, all other industry groups have registered negative growth in number of enterprises and employment, while most of the industry groups have achieved a relatively high growth in real value added. The implication is that growth in value added per worker has been quite high and the employment elasticity has been negative; only machinery and electrical, transport and equipment, and metal products have shown employment potentiality in the rural unorganised manufacturing in the state.