Policies should be directed at making the environment for entrepreneurship far more enabling in India than what it is today. However, entrepreneurs must also contribute to the larger social goal in their own interest
Eight out of the world’s top ten richest people on the Forbes’ The World’s Billionaires 2011 List are self-made, that is, people who have not simply inherited their fortunes, but have built them over time due to their entrepreneurial vision, exemplary leadership and years of hard work. And of course, a huge majority in this list hails from the US, a country that has successfully nurtured the spirit of entrepreneurship since ages; and is also the nation with the highest GDP in the world. These people are the perfect embodiments of leadership, who inspire millions to live their dreams and make them a reality, even in the most unfavourable of circumstances. But there is something more compelling that these entrepreneurs manage to achieve. Through employment generation and equitable wealth creation within masses, these entrepreneurs contribute immensely to nation building and to the subsequent upliftment of disadvantaged sections.
In other words, it cannot ever be overstated that promoting entrepreneurship is absolutely essential for progress – and more so if it’s the case of India that we’re discussing. The Economic Survey for 2011-12 laments that while India is the world’s 4th largest economy, it is also the poorest among G-20 nations in terms of per capita income, which was around $1,527 in 2011. It has been also estimated by the World Bank that India has more than 400 million people living below the poverty line; UN confirms that more than 700 million Indians live on less than $2 a day. These figures are shockingly mammoth.
Entrepreneurship could very well be the only real hope for India to create virtuous cycles of employment to ensure that a massive majority of these disadvantaged classes are uplifted in quick time. If China could manage this kind of a feat, then I fail to understand why can’t India? Between 1981 and 2004, China got more than 600 million people out of poverty – this is more than has ever been achieved by any nation in history. UNDP data estimates that the incidence of rural poverty in China went down from 30.7% in 1978 to 1.6% in 2007. These electrifying improvements correspond to the spectacular rise of Chinese manufacturing and the growth of hundreds of thousands of Chinese entrepreneurs throughout the nation – and all with the proactive support of the State, which ensured continued public-private coordination throughout this growth story.
Leave the macro story, even at the micro/corporate level, promoting entrepreneurship – even within an organisation – is critically essential, The most respected Peter F. Drucker strongly believed that no organisation can dream of being stupendously innovative unless its employees are die-hard entrepreneurs; warriors who live and die with the consistently burning desire to start something new! If I were to expansively summarise the import of his iconic book Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Drucker defined an entrepreneur as an innovator and vice versa. Indeed, that key character trait that separates these entrepreneurs and innovators from the rest is ‘passion’. In a path-breaking May 2007 official Microsoft research release (‘The Rich Have Money – And Passion’), the Harrison Group, a leading international research firm, showed how 70% of America’s big family fortunes are less than 13 years old (that is, they’re not ‘inherited’) and more importantly, that “the people who amassed those fortunes are primarily entrepreneurs – risk takers for whom wealth is a by product of pursuing their passion!”
Eight out of the world’s top ten richest people on the Forbes’ The World’s Billionaires 2011 List are self-made, that is, people who have not simply inherited their fortunes, but have built them over time due to their entrepreneurial vision, exemplary leadership and years of hard work. And of course, a huge majority in this list hails from the US, a country that has successfully nurtured the spirit of entrepreneurship since ages; and is also the nation with the highest GDP in the world. These people are the perfect embodiments of leadership, who inspire millions to live their dreams and make them a reality, even in the most unfavourable of circumstances. But there is something more compelling that these entrepreneurs manage to achieve. Through employment generation and equitable wealth creation within masses, these entrepreneurs contribute immensely to nation building and to the subsequent upliftment of disadvantaged sections.
In other words, it cannot ever be overstated that promoting entrepreneurship is absolutely essential for progress – and more so if it’s the case of India that we’re discussing. The Economic Survey for 2011-12 laments that while India is the world’s 4th largest economy, it is also the poorest among G-20 nations in terms of per capita income, which was around $1,527 in 2011. It has been also estimated by the World Bank that India has more than 400 million people living below the poverty line; UN confirms that more than 700 million Indians live on less than $2 a day. These figures are shockingly mammoth.
Entrepreneurship could very well be the only real hope for India to create virtuous cycles of employment to ensure that a massive majority of these disadvantaged classes are uplifted in quick time. If China could manage this kind of a feat, then I fail to understand why can’t India? Between 1981 and 2004, China got more than 600 million people out of poverty – this is more than has ever been achieved by any nation in history. UNDP data estimates that the incidence of rural poverty in China went down from 30.7% in 1978 to 1.6% in 2007. These electrifying improvements correspond to the spectacular rise of Chinese manufacturing and the growth of hundreds of thousands of Chinese entrepreneurs throughout the nation – and all with the proactive support of the State, which ensured continued public-private coordination throughout this growth story.
Leave the macro story, even at the micro/corporate level, promoting entrepreneurship – even within an organisation – is critically essential, The most respected Peter F. Drucker strongly believed that no organisation can dream of being stupendously innovative unless its employees are die-hard entrepreneurs; warriors who live and die with the consistently burning desire to start something new! If I were to expansively summarise the import of his iconic book Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Drucker defined an entrepreneur as an innovator and vice versa. Indeed, that key character trait that separates these entrepreneurs and innovators from the rest is ‘passion’. In a path-breaking May 2007 official Microsoft research release (‘The Rich Have Money – And Passion’), the Harrison Group, a leading international research firm, showed how 70% of America’s big family fortunes are less than 13 years old (that is, they’re not ‘inherited’) and more importantly, that “the people who amassed those fortunes are primarily entrepreneurs – risk takers for whom wealth is a by product of pursuing their passion!”
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