Azra Batool
Cottage industry means the manufacture of goods at home by manual labour with a small capital, on a small scale,by a small number of workers, often comprising members of a single family it is one of the most important industries in Pakistan. There was a time when Pakistan home and Pakistani village used to hum with activities connected with various types of cottage industries, and some of them acquired great reputation even in the foreign countries on account of the exquisite work manship and artistic beauty of the industries were either deliberately crushed out of existence or languished for luck of support of the rich or were unable to withstand the competition offered by machine made goods this decline of our cottage industries undermined the economic stability of rural Pakistan. The advantages of cottage industries as enumerated above , are some of the reasons for their survival in this age of machinery . Another reason is that there still exists a class of people who prefer goods produced by machine. Even in highly industrialized countries like janpan , Germany and Russia, there is a system of cottage industries. In Japan 49 percent of the industries are run under a,,, domestic,, system. Having regards to the great importance of cottage industries, they are given a prominent place in Pakistan, five- year plan in order Howe so that both types of industries may develop side by side,not on a competitive but on a complementary.
