STRUCTURAL VULNERABILITIES AND RECOVERY PATHWAYS OF SMALL-SCALE INDUSTRIES IN NAGPUR DISTRICT AFTER THE COVID-19

Abstract

COVID-19 shock caused alarming economic and operational pressures on the small-scale industries (SSIs), revealing vulnerability of the small structure that still affects the recovery process following the crisis. This paper will look into the nature of these vulnerabilities and the scale of these vulnerabilities and explore the recovery pathways that SSIs in Nagpur District have chosen. Based on primary data in 120 small-scale manufacturing, trading, and service industrial companies, the research has adopted the descriptive statistics and inferential analysis as a means of evaluating financial, demand-side, supply-chain readiness, and digital readiness constraints and their association with recovery performance. It finds out that the most important weaknesses were liquidity stress, contacting of demands, and failure of supply chains, with recovery plans being largely defensive, based on rationalisation of costs, and dependency on relationship-based financing. Confirmation of a significant negative relationship between structural vulnerability and level of recovery is an outcome of hypothesis testing which reveals that companies that were more exposed to constraints had weaker recovery performance. It is concluded that the SSIs in Nagpur District recover poorly after the pandemic, and it is structurally conditioned, thus requiring specific policy interventions to address the lack of financial strength, the uptake of digital and managerial proficiency, and the ability to withstand the pandemic, and its consequences on these industries in building sustainable recovery.