Primary, secondary and tertiary sectors in India


Last Updated : 29-03-2024 15:27:01
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Rising Importance of the Tertiary Sector in Production

  • Over the thirty years between 1973 and 2003, while production in all the three sectors has increased, it has increased the most in the tertiary sector. As a result, in the year 2003, the tertiary sector has emerged as the largest producing sector in India replacing the primary sector.
  • Why is the tertiary sector becoming so important in India? There could be several reasons. First, in any country several services such as hospitals, educational institutions, post and telegraph services, police stations, courts, village administrative offices, municipal corporations, defence, transport, banks, insurance companies, etc. are required. These can be considered as basic services. In a developing country the government has to take responsibility for the provision of these services. Second, the development of agriculture and industry leads to the development of services such as transport, trade, storage and the like, as we have already seen. Greater the development of the primary and secondary sectors, more would be the demand for such services. Third, as income levels rise, certain sections of people start demanding many more services like eating out, tourism, shopping, private hospitals, private schools, professional training etc. You can see this change quite sharply in cities, especially in big cities. Fourth, over the past decade or so, certain new services such as those based on information and communication technology have become important and essential. The production of these services has been rising rapidly.
  • However, you must remember that not all of the service sector is growing equally well. Service sector in India employs many different kinds of people. At one end there are a limited number of services that employ highly skilled and educated workers. At the other end, there are a very large number of workers engaged in services such as small shopkeepers, repair persons, transport persons, etc. These people barely manage to earn a living and yet they perform these services because no alternative opportunities for work are available to them. Hence, only a part of this sector is growing in importance.
  • A remarkable fact about India is that while there has been a change in the share of the three sectors in GDP, a similar shift has not taken place in employment. The primary sector continues to be the largest employer.
  • Why didn’t a similar shift out of primary sector happen in case of employment? It is because not enough jobs were created in the secondary and tertiary sectors. Even though industrial output or the production of goods went up by eight times during the period, employment in the industry went up by only 2.5 times.
  • The same applies to tertiary sector as well. While production in the service sector rose by 11 times, employment in the service sector rose less than three times.
  • As a result, more than half of the workers in the country are working in the primary sector, mainly in agriculture, producing only a quarter of the GDP. In contrast to this, the secondary and tertiary sectors produce three-fourth of the produce whereas they employ less than half the people.
  • Does this mean that the workers in agriculture are not producing as much as they could? What it means is that there are more people in agriculture than is necessary. So, even if you move a few people out, production will not be affected. In other words, workers in agricultural sector are under- employed.
  • For instance, take the case of a small farmer, Laxmi , owning about two hectares of unirrigated land dependent only on rain and growing crops like jowar and arhar. All five members of her family work in the plot throughout the year. Why? They have nowhere else to go for work. You will see that everyone is working, none remains idle, but in actual fact their labour effort gets divided. Each one is doing some work but no one is fully employed. This is the situation of underemployment, where people are apparently working but all of them are made to work less than their potential. This kind of underemployment is hidden in contrast to someone who does not have a job and is clearly visible as unemployed. Hence, it is also called disguised unemployment.
  • This means that even if we remove a lot of people from agricultural sector and provide them with proper work elsewhere, agricultural production will not suffer. The incomes of the people who take up other work would increase the total family income.
  • This underemployment can also happen in other sectors. For example there are thousands of casual workers in the service sector in urban areas who search for daily employment. They are employed as painters, plumbers, repair persons and others doing odd jobs. Many of them don’t find work everyday.
  • Similarly, we see other people of the service sector on the street pushing a cart or selling something where they may spend the whole day but earn very little. They are doing this work because they do not have better opportunities.

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