Evaluation Study MSE Cluster Development - Ministry of Micro ...

Chapter No: 6 – Hard Interventions in Sampled Clusters6.4 The Role of the State in Supporting Hard InterventionsThough State support is required to play a supportive role in the setting up of SPVs andcommon facilities there is a need to carefully target this support for the equitable benefitof the entire cluster. The MSE-CDP is designed to support these initiatives but it appearsweak in regard to the targeting of this support. What is being stressed here is thatunless it is carefully directed at clusters that are genuinely composed of small and microenterprises there may be a tendency to treat the programme as a convenient mode ofutilizing public funds for the private ends of a few influential and powerful cluster actors.In such a case State support only leads to the strengthening of the dominance of a few.Ideally the State should support large and densely constituted clusters wherein theindividual units are predominantly small. The identification and selection of theseclusters should specifically incorporate criteria that lead to the selection of such clustersonly.The second issue related to State support is that it becomes most essential for the stateto progressively decrease its financial commitment and play only a handholding role.The third issue related to the State support is the organizational form of the SPV that thestate should encourage. The form, which is most conducive to the most widespreadcollective participation by cluster units, should be preferred.The fourth issue related to state support for hard interventions is the size and bankabilityof the project. If the project is bankable then the funding burden of the State can bereduced to support a larger number of cluster initiatives with the resources available,and the accountability and responsibility of the beneficiaries considerably enhanced. Thepolicy framework specially relating to hard interventions need to explicitly incorporatethese issues in order to avoid the dangers of ‘unhealthy’ privatization. The State must‘partner’ the private sector by strongly targeting its support towards measures thatstrengthen and support small and micro enterprises, measures that build the strongroots of democratic collective strength among those who need to be supported the most.6.5 Hard Interventions in Sampled ClustersIn what follows we will be analyzing the various hard interventions that have beeninitiated in the sampled cluster that were covered during this study. As seen in earlierchapters (Chapter 2), hard interventions are implemented in stages and culminate withthe commissioning and functioning of the CFC. Each stage of hard intervention isimportant in itself and is necessary for enabling the next stage. We shall first highlightthe status of hard interventions by examining the various stages that have beenachieved. The profile of hard interventions will then be briefly analyzed to throw somelight on the implementation of the hard interventions and the problems thereof. Weshall then finally look at the functioning of the CFC and comment on what could beconsidered the early indications of the impact of the MSE-CDP.108