Sikarसीकर

What the plan promotes

• ▸Crop loans are the biggest single opportunity at ₹4,705 cr (47.13% of the plan); bajra is the main crop, with pulses, jowar, guar, taramira, sesame, cotton, cumin and fenugreek also grown widely across the district's 12 blocks
• ▸Dairy is the district's most important allied activity, with an animal-husbandry–dairy term-loan potential of ₹687 cr; the district has about 5.54 lakh buffaloes, 3.84 lakh cows and 9.20 lakh goats, and there is strong scope for milk-collection centres and cold storage
• ▸Food & agro processing has ₹37 cr of credit potential across atta chakki, fruit & vegetable processing, spice processing, edible-oil extraction & refining, dairy processing, dal mills, meat & poultry processing, onion processing and animal-feed units; bajra, pulses, groundnut, methi, isabgol and onion are the main crops available for processing
• ▸MSME is the second-largest sector at ₹2,212 cr (22.15%); RIICO has developed 16 industrial areas (Sikar, Neem Ka Thana, Shrimadhopur, Khandela, Reengus, Fatehpur, Palsana etc.) and 12,095 Udyam-registered units already employ 91,844 people
• ▸The district is rich in minerals — gypsum, marble, tungsten, limestone, salt, china clay, sandstone, calcite, dolomite, steatite and quartz — with large-scale hill mining in Neem Ka Thana and Patan, giving strong scope for mineral-based processing and building-material units
• ▸Handicrafts are a notable cluster with 3,583 handicraft units, around 5,000 artisans and 4,659 artisan cards issued; the plan suggests new clusters in carpet, leather footwear (jooti), sculpture and terracotta

Gaps the plan names

• ▸The district has very few food-processing and packaging units; the District Industries Centre and banks need to support setting up grain, food, oil, dal and pickle/murabba and animal-feed processing units so that farm produce (bajra, pulses, groundnut, methi, isabgol, onion) gains quality and value
• ▸There is a severe water problem — Sikar depends entirely on tubewells and wells for irrigation, evaporation has reduced water storage capacity, and only about 2.23 lakh hectares of the 5.01 lakh hectare net sown area is irrigated
• ▸Employment opportunities are scarce: only 33.43% of the population is working, 6.31% is marginally employed and 60.26% is non-working, because the district lacks industries and infrastructure to absorb its labour force
• ▸Awareness-and-training gaps hold back processing entrepreneurs and agri-clinic/agri-business graduates — 138 people trained under the ACABC scheme but only 3 got bank loans; linkage agencies need to run awareness camps and the DIC must develop new handicraft clusters
• ▸Business bodies such as ASSOCHAM, FICCI, CII and DCCI have no fully-functional branches in the district to coordinate between traders, government and banks, and cold-chain, packhouse, grading and market-linkage infrastructure for horticulture export crops is missing