The National Capital Region of Delhi (Delhi NCR), one of the largest metropolitan areas in India, has experienced dramatic industrial development since the 1980s. In the initial stage, large-scale industrial estates were developed in some districts abutted on Delhi, especially in Gurgaon, Haryana and Gautam Buddha Nagar, Uttar Pradesh. In recent years, industrialization has occurred in the remote area situated around 100 km from Delhi.
This paper is to pick up Alwar District, Rajasthan as a research field for discussing the actual situation of the forefront of the expanding Delhi industrial agglomeration. While Rajasthan State consists of thirty-three districts, only Alwar is included in Delhi NCR. The northern part of the district is in the time distance that can be reached from Delhi about two hours through National Highway 8 (NH8) that has been renovated as main artery links Delhi to Mumbai. Rajasthan State Government has accelerated the development of industrial estates along with NH8 in the 2000s by its industrial development corporation (RIICO). It is thought that Alwar has the following competitive advantages in terms of industrial location. First, cost for acquisition of industrial land is much cheaper than that of Haryana. Second, cost of manpower is also lowest according to the minimum wage of four states constituting Delhi NCR. The author has checked these two points through his survey on companies that are located at Neemrana Industrial Estate developed by RIICO.
Neemrana Industrial Estate consists of three parts, namely Phase I to III. Phase III is dedicated to Japanese companies and its land cost is 2,000 Rs. per square meter in the years of 2011 and 2012. All of the surveyed companies have highly appreciated this cheaper land cost as the most important factor of their location at the industrial estate. On the contrary, they have paid higher salary to their staffs than those of Haryana. As Neemrana is agricultural rural area just until recently, the supply of both engineers and managerial persons is quite poor. The companies at this industrial area have adopted the staffs mostly from Haryana, paying 10 to 20% higher salary than that of the state. Even taking on production workers, the companies have paid the same level of wages in Haryana. Therefore the author concludes that labor cost is not a location factor to trigger the expansion of Delhi industrial agglomeration.