Matters of business

The sixth economic census highlights the significant growth in business establishments all over the country and the urban-rural divide in employment generation.

NEW DELHI, 08/02/2017: A shop keeper using POS machine at Surakhpur Village, the First fully digital payment enabled village, in Delhi on Wednesday. Photo: Sushil Kumar Verma

THE sixth economic census, conducted by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation between January 2013 and April 2014 and released in 2016, provides insights into the changes in the number of establishments in the country, their composition and ownership data since 2005, when the previous such census was conducted.

According to the census, the total number of establishments in India rose 41.79 per cent from the previous census to 58.5 million, of which 34.8 million were in rural areas.

A total of 131.29 million persons were employed by all the establishments, 77.6 per cent of which were engaged in non-agricultural activities.

Uttar Pradesh led in the total number of establishments, followed by Maharashtra, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, and these five States accounted for 50 per cent of all establishments in the country.

Four of these States, excluding Andhra Pradesh, and Gujarat together accounted for half of the total employment generated by all the establishments.

The highest growth rate of employment was seen in Manipur (93.57 per cent), followed by Assam (89.32 per cent) and Uttar Pradesh (79.94 per cent).

Employment generated was nearly evenly distributed between rural (51.71 per cent) and urban areas (48.29 per cent) despite rural areas having 40 per cent more establishments.

Maharashtra topped in jobs overall, having employed 14.51 million persons (11.05 per cent), and also in urban employment (13.33 per cent). Uttar Pradesh led in creating rural employment (11.71 per cent).

Among private proprietorships, which accounted for 89.39 per cent of all establishments, men owned 84.29 per cent and women 15.40 per cent.

A caste-wise breakdown of the proprietorships showed that members of the Scheduled Castes accounted for 11.4 per cent, the Scheduled Tribes 5.4 per cent and Other Backward Classes 40.8 per cent.

Some 73.70 per cent of all the proprietorships were Hindu, while Muslims accounted for 13.80 per cent and Christians 2.60 per cent. Members of the Sikh, Buddhist, Jain and other religions accounted for 9.8 per cent.