Question

Explain the role of secondary sector in an economy.

Hint:

Explain what the secondary sector does, then cover value addition to raw materials, employment, support to agriculture, export earnings, and the growth it creates in transport, banking and trade.

Answer 1

Concept:

• The place of the secondary sector is best seen by following one raw material from the field to the shop.
• At each step the sector adds value, creates work and pulls another part of the economy into action.

Step 1: Start in the field.
A farmer grows cotton. Sold as raw cotton it fetches the lowest price in the whole chain, and if the country stopped here it would earn only that price.
The primary sector by itself cannot make a country prosperous.

Step 2: Follow the cotton into the mill.
Spinning turns it into yarn and weaving turns yarn into cloth. This is the work of the secondary sector, where natural products are changed into other forms through manufacturing.
The same cotton is now worth several times what it was, and that gain stays in the country.

Step 3: Count who is employed along the way.
The mill needs spinners, weavers, dyers, supervisors, engineers and mechanics, all working the year round rather than by season. Employment of this kind is what draws people out of the overcrowded agricultural sector.

Step 4: Count what else the mill sets in motion.
It needs power, machinery, transport to bring cotton in and take cloth out, banks to finance it, insurance to cover it and warehouses to store the output. Each of these is another job in the tertiary sector.
Meanwhile the same industrial base supplies the farmer with pumps, tractors, fertilisers and pesticides, so agriculture improves as well.

Step 5: Follow the cloth out of the country.
Finished garments exported abroad earn foreign exchange, which pays for the crude oil, machinery and technology India must import. Selling a finished product earns many times what selling raw cotton would have earned.

Final Answer: Following one crop through the chain shows the whole role of the secondary sector. It multiplies the value of raw material, employs people steadily, equips agriculture, sets transport, banking and trade in motion, and earns the foreign exchange the country needs.