Industries and Minerals of Haryana: Towns and Products

Haryana has almost no mineral fuel and very little metallic ore, yet it is one of the most industrialised states of India. The reason is position: the state wraps around Delhi, its roads and railways carry the traffic of the capital, and its towns had both power and farm surpluses to build on. Questions from this topic are mostly matching questions, town with product, so the list of industrial towns is what has to be learnt.

The industrial belt around Delhi

Faridabad is the largest industrial city of the state, with tractors, refrigerators, tyres, switchgear, garments and a very large auto component cluster. Gurugram, the Millennium City, began as an industrial town when a car plant came up there in the nineteen eighties and then became a centre of information technology, business process work and real estate. Manesar in the same district holds an industrial model township with vehicle and electronics plants, and new capacity has been planned at Kharkhoda in Sonipat district. Bahadurgarh in Jhajjar district, called the gateway of Haryana, is known for footwear and for ceramic and sanitaryware units, and Dharuhera in Rewari district for motorcycle manufacture. Together this southern belt makes Haryana a leading producer of passenger cars, motorcycles and tractors in the country.

Panipat and the northern towns

Panipat is the textile town: handloom durries, carpets, blankets and furnishing fabrics are woven there, and the city is also the biggest centre in India for yarn recycled from old woollens, which is why it is called the city of weavers. The same city carries heavy industry as well, with the Indian Oil refinery at Baholi commissioned in the late nineteen nineties, a urea plant of National Fertilizers Limited and a large thermal power station. Yamunanagar in the north is the plywood capital of the country, its timber market at Jagadhri feeding hundreds of units, and it also has a big paper mill and the Saraswati sugar mill, one of the largest in India. Jagadhri itself is famous for brass and metal utensils. Ambala, and Ambala Cantt in particular, is the scientific instruments town, where laboratory and surgical apparatus and mixers are made, and Karnal, Kaithal and Jind have rice mills and agro industry.

The western and southern towns

Hisar is the steel town of Haryana, with a large stainless steel and pipe industry, and it is also a cotton and agro machinery centre. Sonipat has engineering and hosiery units and once had a well known cycle factory; its Rai and Kundli estates adjoin Delhi. Rewari in the south has an old reputation for brassware and now for auto parts, and Narnaul and Mahendragarh have stone and agro units. In the cotton districts of Sirsa and Fatehabad, ginning and oil mills dominate, and India's nuclear power project in this state is being built at Gorakhpur in Fatehabad district.

Minerals of the Aravallis

Haryana's minerals are mostly building materials from the Aravalli hills of the south and from the Shivalik edge in the north. Limestone, dolomite, quartzite, slate, marble, china clay, silica sand and masonry stone are the main ones; iron ore occurs only in small quantity in Mahendragarh, and traces of copper and other metals are reported from the Tosham hill in Bhiwani. The quartzite of Kaliana in Charkhi Dadri district has been quarried for building stone for centuries. Because unregulated quarrying was stripping the Aravallis, mining there was stopped under orders of the Supreme Court, and the state now works through notified mining blocks, which is why Haryana imports most of the raw material its industry uses.

Who builds the estates

The Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation develops the industrial estates and the industrial model townships, allots plots and provides water, power and roads to them; the district industries centres handle the small units, and the Khadi and Village Industries Board looks after village crafts. The state's enterprise promotion policy offers graded help, with more for the backward blocks of the south and west than for the districts next to Delhi, because industry has crowded into the national capital region and left the rest of the state behind. For the exam, carry away three lists: the towns and their products, the Aravalli minerals and the reason mining there is restricted, and the agencies that run the estates.