This article examines the location pattern of unorganised manufacturing enterprises across districts in India. Using a unique data set of 435 districts spread across 25 states, drawn from the Enterprise Survey data of the National Sample Survey (NSS) 1994–95 and 2005–06 ‘thick’ rounds, we find that unorganised manufacturing enterprises are concentrated in a few leading districts, mostly in the metropolitan areas, but their share has declined in the post-reform (post-1991) period, and some new metropolises and suburban districts have emerged as new industrial destinations. The spatial concentration in the distribution of the unorganised manufacturing enterprises across districts has marginally declined—both at the aggregated and disaggregated industry level—in the post-reform period. Our econometric analysis shows that the level of economic development, infrastructure facilities, labour productivity, capital productivity, population size, population density, availability and stock of raw materials, presence and size of organised industries and urbanisation have significant positive effects on the location of unorganised manufacturing enterprises, while economic diversity has a strong negative impact. The specificity of our study is that we use district-level data, which allows us to provide a relatively comprehensive view of the location pattern of unorganised manufacturing enterprises in India.
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