A study of the manufacturing industries and of the employed population of India

Das, B (1962) A study of the manufacturing industries and of the employed population of India. MSc(R) thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

A cross sectional analysis of Indian manufacturing for tile year 1950, based on the data provided by the fifth Census of manufacturing was revealed that manufacturing was highly concentrated in the two states, West Bengal and Bombay which together carried about 60 per cent of the total manufacturing activities. Within the industries, the textiles shared about 46 per cent of the total capital investment. Among manufacturing costs the item under 'Materials, Fuels and Work given out' comprised the largest single element, constituting in the aggregate about 71 per cent of the gross output. The wages, salaries and overhead costs have also been computed as percentages of the 'Value of the product' as well as the 'Value added'. Since the 'Value added' is a non-duplicating item (cost of materials being excluded), its relationship to other relevant factors of production Is considered useful. Relative to the value of the Product , the capital investment in manufacturing industries varied widely. Capital investment as percentage of 'Value added' was significantly low for the match industry. This was because the match industry was the least mechanized of all. Total productive capital per capita was highly correlated to the 'Value added' per capita among the industries . The implications of the production function p = h, LK Cj, as established by Douglas and Cobb, are studied in Chapter II. Values of the parameters h, k and j were obtained for Indian manufacturing using the data provided by the Census of Manufactures (1947 to 1955). The production equations so obtained suggest a low labour elasticity of output and a high capital elasticity of output for nearly all the years under consideration. The sum of the exponents j and k was in all oases about 1, in spite of the fact that no a-priori restriction had been imposed. The accuracy of the production function was later tested by comparing the theoretical and observed values of log P. She form of this production equation was also studied in relation to the manufacturing industries in the United Kingdom for the years 1948 and 1949, on the basis of the data provided by the Census of Production, 1930, 1949 and 1948, Summary tables. The function for U.K. revealed a high labour elasticity of output. However, for the textile industries, the production function for both India and the United Kingdom showed a high coefficient for Capital. In Chapter 111, the trend in employment in relation to the volume of production in Indian manufacturing during the short period 1946 to 1931 is investigated. It was only since 1946, that the Directorate of Industrial Statistics have been supplying adequate data on the manufacturing activities in India. Although the period under consideration is too short, yet some features are indeed note-worthy. In the composition of employment, it will he seen that during the period, the wage-earners lost some ground to salaried and other workers. Owing to relatively slow increase in employment as compared to the increase in output during this period, there has been a steady decline in the general index of employment per unit of product. From 1947 onward, the number of workers employed in making a unit of product seem to have .declined in many industries. The bicycle and sewing machine industries which were conspicuous for their increases in both output and employment were characterized by sharp reduction in employment per unit of product. The part played by the Capital investment and other relevant factors are discussed lii the text. We have also attempted to measure the change in efficiency in production taking into-consideration the factors, labour and Capital. Chapter IV deals with a study of relationship between Primary, Secondary and Tertiary employed populations in India based on the information provided by the 1931 and 1931 Census tables. Our analysis revealed that the tertiary population is more dependent on the secondary activities rather than the primary ones. In countries like U.K. and U.S.A., where farming is a mechanized operation, the tertiary employment depends equally on the employment in farming as much as it does on manufacturing. An attempt has also been made to measure the contributions of the 'earning dependents' and 'secondary occupations' in the agricultural sector in relation to the self-supporters. We estimate the share of earning dependents and secondary occupations to be 1/4 and 1/8 respectively as compared to 1 for the self-supporters.

• Item Type: Thesis (MSc(R))
• Qualification Level: Masters
• Keywords: Management, Labor relations
• Date of Award: 1962
• Depositing User: Enlighten Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:1962-72897
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 11 Jun 2019 11:06
• Last Modified: 11 Jun 2019 11:06
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/72897