India's Top 50 Districts Drive 33 Per Cent Of Informal Sector Activity

(MENAFN- IANS) New Delhi, Sep 10 (IANS) India's top 50 districts drive nearly one-third of the unincorporated non-agricultural sector's activity in the country, while women comprise one-third of the workforce in 237 districts, reflecting their growing empowerment across the country, according to the first-ever district-level estimates released by the National Statistics Office on Thursday.

"The top 50 districts, ranked by the number of unincorporated establishments, account for nearly one-third of the total establishments, workforce, and Gross Value Added," the figures show.

Roughly one-third of all districts have more than one lakh unincorporated establishments per district.

In 280 districts, GVA per worker exceeds the all-India average, indicating relatively higher levels of economic productivity in these districts.

The top 10 districts are spread across four states: Gujarat, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal, while the top 50 districts are spread across twelve states: Bihar, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal.

The district-level distribution further reveals considerable variation in the scale of the unincorporated sector across the country. Roughly one-third of all districts have more than one lakh unincorporated establishments per district, while about 9 per cent of the districts have fewer than 10,000 establishments per district. Only 16 districts (eight from West Bengal, three from Maharashtra, two from Gujarat, one each from Karnataka, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh) have more than 5 lakh unincorporated establishments per district.

The importance of granular and high-frequency data has grown significantly in recent years, reflecting the increasing need for evidence-based policymaking and targeted interventions. In particular, sub-state-level statistics play a crucial role in identifying regional variations, emerging strengths and areas requiring attention, thereby enabling more targeted and area-specific policy interventions, an official statement said.

As part of this endeavour, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) has already published, for the first time, a comprehensive statistical profile of the unincorporated sector across the country's 46 million-plus cities, identified on the basis of Census 2011 population.

Taking this initiative further, MoSPI has now presented a district-level portrait of the scale, structure and economic performance of India's unincorporated non-agricultural sector across states and Union Territories (UTs). The district-level estimates presented in this report also include the corresponding estimates for million-plus cities located within the respective districts, the statement added.

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