Spatial Analysis of Automobile Component Industry in India

Abstract

The formation of industrial clusters has been studied for a long time. Industries located newlinein a cluster benefit from externalities such as localization economies, urbanization newlineeconomies, and inter-industry linkages. On the other hand, some insights from the newlineliterature show that clusters differ in form and exist at different spatial scale levels newline(local, district, state, or nation). Furthermore, the spatial connotations of the concept newlineare vague and the geographical scale of clusters is not well defined. In present study, newlinewe address this problem with regard to the auto-component industry in India. newlineWe identify spatial patterns of plant location of the auto-component industry in India newlineto determine geographical factors that influence their development. We newlineemploy Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) newlinetechnique to identify clusters in conjunction with Python routines. We identify sixteen newlineauto-component manufacturing clusters. Nine clusters are spread across the northern newlineregion, the remaining seven are located in the southern region, and about ten per cent newlineof plants are outside clusters. newlineWe find that the south has a larger presence of vehicle assembly plants, greater depth newlinein auto industry ancillarisation, and far greater geographical dispersion of industrial newlinelocation. In effect, the south can be considered to be a large agglomeration that sees newlinethe north of India as an export market, where absolute demand is much higher (and newlineper capita demand much lower). Our analysis shows that geographic factors such as newlineaccessibility of auto-component plants for auto assemblers, the overlap of clusters with newlineurban areas, physical infrastructure provision (such as highways), and the role of newlinemulti-industry clusters in the location of auto-component industry are important for newlinethe preferred location of the industry newline