Manufacturing Industries — Notes

Manufacturing means turning raw materials, on a large scale, into goods that are worth more; it belongs to the secondary sector.

Importance

• Supplies farmers with pumps, fertilisers, pesticides, pipes and machines, so it helps modernise agriculture.
• Creates jobs in the secondary and tertiary sectors, reducing dependence on farming; industrial growth was seen as a way to fight unemployment and poverty (the idea behind public and joint sector units).
• Industries in tribal and backward areas aim to reduce regional disparities.
• Exports of manufactured goods expand trade and earn foreign exchange; countries that turn raw materials into goods of higher value prosper.
• Agriculture and industry move hand in hand: agro-industries buy farm produce and raise farm productivity.

Location factors: raw material, labour, capital, power and market (and infrastructure). Since these rarely occur together, industry goes to the least-cost site. Industry brings urbanisation, and cities attract more industry with markets and services (banking, insurance, transport, labour, consultants) — agglomeration economies. Before independence, factories clustered in port cities (Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai) geared to overseas trade, leaving industrial pockets in a rural hinterland.

• By raw material: agro-based (cotton, woollen, jute, silk textiles, rubber, sugar, tea, coffee, edible oil) and mineral-based (iron and steel, cement, aluminium, machine tools, petrochemicals).
• By main role: basic or key industries supply products or raw materials for making other goods (iron and steel, copper smelting, aluminium smelting); consumer industries make goods for direct use (sugar, toothpaste, paper, sewing machines, fans).
• By capital investment: small-scale industries are defined by a maximum investment in assets; units above it are large-scale.
• By ownership: public sector (government agencies: BHEL, SAIL); private sector (individuals or firms: TISCO, Bajaj Auto, Dabur); joint sector (state with private owners: Oil India Ltd.); cooperative sector (owned by producers of raw material, workers or both, sharing profits and losses: sugar in Maharashtra, coir in Kerala).
• By bulk and weight: heavy (iron and steel) and light (electrical goods).

Textiles — unique because India handles every stage itself, from growing fibre to finished garments, so it is self-reliant along the whole value chain; a major source of industrial output, jobs and foreign exchange.

Cotton textiles — ancient hand spinning and handloom weaving; power-looms after the eighteenth century; Indian weavers hurt in the colonial period by mill cloth from England. First successful mill: Mumbai, 1854. Early concentration in the cotton belt of Maharashtra and Gujarat (raw cotton, market, transport and ports, labour, moist climate). Links: farmers, boll pluckers, ginning, spinning, weaving, dyeing, designing, packaging, tailoring; demand for chemicals, dyes, packaging and engineering. Spinning is centralised (Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu); weaving is decentralised (handloom, powerloom, mill; khadi in homes) to use traditional skills and designs in cotton, silk, zari and embroidery. Yarn is exported (e.g. to Japan). Problems: weaving cannot use much high-quality yarn; erratic power; machinery needs upgrading, especially weaving and processing; low labour output; competition from synthetic fibres.

Jute — mills mainly in a narrow belt along the Hugli in West Bengal; first mill at Rishra, near Kolkata, 1855. After Partition (1947) the mills stayed in India but about three-quarters of the jute-growing area went to Bangladesh (then East Pakistan). Location factors: jute grown nearby, cheap water transport with rail and road, plenty of water for processing, cheap labour (West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh), Kolkata's banking, insurance and port. Challenges: synthetic substitutes and rivals (Bangladesh, Brazil, the Philippines, Egypt, Thailand). Support: mandatory jute packaging; National Jute Policy, 2005 (productivity, quality, fair prices to farmers, yield per hectare); growing demand for biodegradable materials.

Sugar — cane is bulky and its sucrose falls in long haulage, so mills stay near fields. Seasonal, so suited to cooperatives. Mills have been shifting to the south and west, especially Maharashtra: higher sucrose, cooler climate and longer crushing season, successful cooperatives. Challenges: seasonal nature, old and inefficient methods, transport delays, under-use of bagasse.

Board map list (locate and label) — cotton textile centres: Mumbai, Indore, Surat, Kanpur, Coimbatore.

Iron and steel — a basic industry (machinery for heavy, medium and light industries; engineering goods, construction, defence, medical, scientific and consumer goods); steel use is an index of development. A heavy industry: iron ore, coking coal and limestone in about 4 : 2 : 1, with some manganese. Integrated plants handle everything from raw material to rolling and shaping; mini plants use electric furnaces, steel scrap and sponge iron and make mild and alloy steel. Public sector steel is marketed through SAIL; TISCO through Tata Steel. The Chotanagpur plateau has the largest concentration (low-cost ore, raw materials close together, cheap labour, large home market). Problems: costly and limited coking coal, lower labour productivity, irregular energy, poor infrastructure; liberalisation and private investment have helped; more R&D is needed.

Aluminium smelting — the second most important metallurgical industry; aluminium weighs little, does not corrode easily, carries heat well, is easy to shape and gains strength in alloys (aircraft, utensils, wires) and replaces steel, copper, zinc and lead in many uses. Bauxite is a bulky, dark reddish rock. Location: cheap power available at all times and a steady, cheap bauxite supply. Plants in Odisha, West Bengal, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.

Chemicals — inorganic (sulphuric acid for fertilisers, synthetic fibres, plastics, adhesives, paints, dyes; nitric acid; alkalis; soda ash for glass, soap, detergents, paper; caustic soda), widely spread; organic (petrochemicals for synthetic fibres, rubber, plastics, dyes, drugs and pharmaceuticals), located near oil refineries. The industry is its own largest consumer.

Fertilisers — nitrogenous (mainly urea), phosphatic, DAP and complex N-P-K fertilisers; all potash is imported. Expanded after the Green Revolution; Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Kerala produce about half.

Cement — bulky limestone, silica, gypsum, plus coal, power and rail; first plant Chennai, 1904; decontrol of price and distribution from 1989 spurred growth; Gujarat plants reach Gulf markets; exports to East Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.

Automobiles — trucks, buses, cars, two- and three-wheelers; liberalisation and new models raised demand; centres around Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata, Lucknow, Indore, Hyderabad, Jamshedpur, Bengaluru.

IT and electronics — from televisions and phones to radar and computers; Bengaluru is the electronic capital; other centres Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata, Lucknow, Coimbatore. Major impact: employment; a large foreign exchange earner through software and BPO.

Board map list (locate and label): iron and steel plants — Durgapur, Bokaro, Jamshedpur, Bhilai, Vijayanagar, Salem; software technology parks — Noida, Gandhinagar, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram.

Types of pollution

• Air: too much of harmful gases such as sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide, and airborne particles (dust, sprays, mist, smoke) from chemical and paper factories, brick kilns, refineries, smelters and fossil fuels; toxic gas leaks can be disastrous. It harms people, animals, plants, buildings and the atmosphere.
• Water: organic and inorganic effluents from paper and pulp, chemicals, textile dyeing, refineries, tanneries, electroplating carry dyes, detergents, acids, salts, heavy metals (lead, mercury), pesticides, fertilisers, plastics and rubber. Fly ash, phospho-gypsum and iron and steel slag are major solid wastes.
• Thermal pollution of water: hot water from factories and thermal plants drained before cooling. Wastes from nuclear facilities can cause cancers and birth defects.
• Land: dumping of glass, harmful chemicals, effluents, packaging, salts and garbage makes soil useless; rain carries pollutants into groundwater.
• Noise: machinery, generators, saws and drills cause irritation, stress, hearing impairment, higher heart rate and blood pressure.

Control

• Water: use the same water several times over (reuse and recycling) before letting it go; harvest rainwater; treat hot water and effluents before release — primary (mechanical: screening, grinding, flocculation, sedimentation), secondary (biological), tertiary (biological, chemical and physical, with recycling); regulate over-drawing of groundwater by law.
• Air: fit electrostatic precipitators, fabric filters, scrubbers and inertial separators; use oil or gas instead of coal.
• Noise: silencers on generators, redesigned machinery, noise-absorbing material, earplugs.
• NTPC shows the way: optimum use and upgrading of equipment, maximum ash utilisation, green belts, ash-pond management and ash-water recycling, liquid waste management, and ecological monitoring with online data.