What MP has achieved in past few years?

Industrialization is an important aspect of the development of any state/country. It does not just catalyze the production of end goods by value and by volume. It also encourages other sectors as well, for example, logistics, etc.

Independent India has a history of less than a century. In such a scenario it becomes pivotal to also discuss about the modern history during the British Raj.

Under British Raj when they were industrializing India, they primarily focused on peninsular-region, given its accessibility to rich resources, especially that of water.

Therefore, in colonial times nothing much happened in the central region. Post freedom pro-socialist government continued to capitalize on similar industries and paid little heed to resurrect the new ones for quite a time.

Besides, in modern times the challenges to industrialize MP are its agrarian economy and large amount of forest tract in SC/ST area, which makes the process of land acquisition tough.

Lack of political will and general corruption during Digvijay's government is another thing that doesn't need any mention. Things were pathetic during his times.

However let's move on and discuss the potential of Madhya Pradesh.

• Madhya Pradesh is a leading producer of minerals with major production in Manganese, Copper, Glass, Limestone etc.
• As MP's economy is agrarian in nature. It ranks first in the production of Soyabean, Pulses, Grams, Garlic etc., while it is a second-largest producer of wheat, maize, and Green Peas.
• The state contributes 40% share to India's total organic farming.
• MP is a host of several national institutes likes IIT, leading NITs, NIFT, NLIU, IIIT, CIPET, and more than 100 private engineering colleges in Bhopal itself. This gives it leverage for abundant skilled manpower.

So, let's have a look at what has been done to capitalize on this advantage.

• The state government has made an investment of more than $15.4 billion in support infrastructure in the last five years. The state has good connectivity to large markets and major metro cities such as New Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Kolkata. This will complement MP's surplus produce.
• In the last 15 years, MP has become the fastest-growing states in terms of annual GSDP with the rate of 8% CAGR. This indicates the areas with potential have been capitalized.
• Madhya Pradesh stands 5th among Indian states in ease of doing business ranking conducted by World Bank and DIPP. This indicates that factors like general corruption, crime, and sluggish and cumbersome process for beginning a business avenue is eradicated to a large extent.
• Over the last years, it has developed SEZs and sector-specific parks like SEZ Pithampur, Crystal IT park, Plastic park in Tamot and Gwalior, Logistics park Shivpuri, Vikram Udyogpuri Ujjain, Spice park Chhindwara, and others. Such IT parks will help MP to leverage on its abundant skilled manpower which was a result of resurrecting premier educational institutions.
• A total of 49 industrial units have been established in Pithampur while 6 are upcoming. Apart from Pithampur SEZ, one Government's Crystal IT Park in Indore and three private operated SEZs - Infosys, TCS, and Impetus, all in Indore are functional.
• To quantify and to put things in perspective: Total investment made in Pithampur SEZ is approximately INR 4,190 crores (41.9 billion), export business done till last year from the SEZ was approximately INR 12,300 crores (123 billion)
• According to report released by RBI, Madhya Pradesh secured the fifth position garnering 7.2 percent share in industrial investments.
• Government of India approved metro projects in two cities in the state of Madhya Pradesh – Bhopal and Indore. The total estimated cost of the project in both cities is around INR 145 billion (US$ 2.1 billion) and the project will be partly funded by the central government. The construction work for the metro in Bhopal is under construction on a war footing.

With such projects already in place, MP is heading towards the perfect destination.