Themes

Poverty: Rural and urban clusters may both be plagued by poverty. The outcome of projects with a focus on poverty may be measured by enhancement of incomes among the poverty nodes. Accordingly, interventions may be targeted on the poor through provision of micro finance, development of skills or linkages with better paying markets for their products.

Productivity and Competitiveness: Most of the classical cluster development initiatives among the industrial clusters as also micro enterprise clusters are aimed at reducing cost and thus improving their competitiveness. The nature of interventions may vary from technology improvement, BDS development, energy reduction and/or skill development.

Innovation: The focus of intervention in this area is to help develop new products and services that have a high degree of knowledge component therein. These product and services may be new to the cluster, region or nation with high value realization. Nature of interventions may vary from common R&D, provision of venture capital to building skills for product development.

Energy and Environment: Certain energy intensive sectors and industries with adverse environmental applications require targeted interventions to improve the energy efficiency and reduce pollution hazards. Accordingly the intervention may vary from assisting the cluster stakeholders to access energy efficient technology, set up common facilities for pollution treatment and provide specialized technical inputs.

Social Responsibility: Certain industrial sectors are accused of and prone to usage of socially adverse practices such as child labour, occupational safety & health hazards and other adverse labour practices. Some of the cluster enterprise may undertake community development initiatives in the areas of health, literacy and fair trade that require specialized inputs through relevant technologies, BDS development and other socially relevant practices.

Skill: The cluster and sectors where skill enhancement may lead to significant improvement in productivity and competitiveness are often targeted by institutions with mandate on skill enhancement. Ministries of rural development, science and technology and labour undertake programs for skill enhancement in cluster that requires grading of skills, provision of relevant inputs and strengthening local institutions involved in trading and education.

Finance: In the Indian context formal means of financing have still not reached more that 1/5th of all the enterprises. Development of customizes of financial products for cluster are seen as opportunities both in the industrial and artesian clusters where banks and their clients can mutually gain.

Marketing: Development assistance for marketing cluster products require fostering collective initiatives. These initiatives may range from undertaking market research, buying business development services together and/or selling collectively.

Information: Information about clusters and cluster initiatives is at best scantly available. This makes targeted development interventions difficult and inefficient. Diverse packets of information available with different ministries and implementing agencies, if coordinated and made available can lead to avoidance of work duplication and increased commercial transactions among complementary clusters. Information about clusters can therefore be collated analyzed and customized for different target audience.