Should Small Scale Industries be Encouraged?

I fully support the stand of those who hold the view that small scale industries promote employment while large scale industrial enterprises tend to reduce employment because of the increasing mechanization processes. Small scale industries help alleviate poverty because they enable the people running such industries to supplement their earnings and enable those who have hardly any income to start having a modest one, the quantum depending upon the labor put in, the facilities for marketing the products and of course the demand of the consumers for the goods thus manufactured. In large scale enterprises there is much exploitation by capitalists; in fact in big industries there are all the evils associated with capitalism.

Cottage industries require only a limited amount, of capital and the units can be set up in small places and even in one’s own home. Of course much depends upon the availability of the requisite raw material. Such industries help to relieve the increasing pressure on land. They also help to combat poverty; establishment of small scale enterprises is recommended as one of the measures to eliminate or alleviate poverty, the establishment of big industries brings about gradual and progressive turning of the human being into a machine. This is not so in small industries but are also independent units in themselves.

Small scale enterprises can prove a great success provided the requisite conditions exist. Enterprising people received loans from official agencies, and after some months the loans have been returned with the low interest charged on them. I know persons who with some assistance started making envelopes, bottle caps, liquids caps, simple gadgets, etc, and were able to feed their families with their labours. They could hold their heads high and were proud of their achievement.