According to a recent statement of Jawhar Sircar, Additional Secretary and Development Commissioner, Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, there are 12.5 million MSMEs in India, providing employment to 30 million people, and contributing around 50 per cent of the country’s industrial production. Indian micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) have reached a record level of US$ 50 billion during 2006-07, and they constitute 40 per cent of India’s total merchandise exports. Small scale industries in the country have consistently maintained a growth rate higher by about 1.5 to 2 than the overall industrial growth rate.

Thus the statistics is flowery enough at a glance; however, this does not talk about the number of micro and small industries that have been closed down in the era of globalisation. A brief walk through in many of the industrial belts brings in notice the remains of several once-existing such industries.

There is no reason to deny the fact that a rapid and steady industrial growth is taking place in this country. True is the fact too that our government is providing assistance for entrepreneurship development; credit guarantee fund scheme for small industries, micro finance programmes; credit linked subsidy scheme for technology upgradation and so on. However, since post independence era, most of our small and micro industries were started by very ordinary entrepreneurs, who mostly did not have any hi-fi technical qualification or far-reaching dream for expansion. Those industries were set up just to address the need of the market (mostly local) right at that moment. Thus in the era of globalisation, product obsolescence and loss of competitiveness due to either technological back-fall or lack of scale of economy, are two major causes to kill many of our small and micro industries, who could not diversify or switch over to new product lines in time.

If history is something to learn from, along with all other kinds of assistance, government and industry associations need to conduct regular, vigorous brain-storming sessions on emerging global opportunities for diversification based on market dynamics. Our small and micro industry owners have to realise the difference between today’s market-driven production and yesterday’s product-driven market. Beyond man-machine-material, success and long running of any business depend on the strength of business philosophy.