Is India a Nation of Job-seekers?

By Dr Shai Vyakarnam, Director, AcceleratorIndia.

Here is a question to get us started.

Is India really a nation of entrepreneurial people or a nation of desperate job seekers?

There is a growing movement of entrepreneurship development. The elite institutions of management, technology and universities have a growing body of courses, incubation centres and academics dedicated to the topic.  There are growing networks and not-for-profit organisations also entering the field of enterprise development and support. The sources of funding is becoming more diversified, going beyond family sources and banks to now include professional sources such as business angels and venture capitalists. Another positive signal is that parents no longer throw their arms up in horror if their sons and daughters declare their desire to start a company!

It is almost becoming socially acceptable among the middle class, although it has to be said that a low grade job in a software company still holds greater dowry purchasing parity than an entrepreneurial career!

So we are on the start of a wave in India, which is kind of ironic since India has been a magnet for trade for far longer than version 1 of MSDOS. India has been a trading nation for a very long time! A few examples illustrate this point. Roman coins were found in Tamil Nadu and Andhra coins found in Pompei. The Indian Rupee along with Hindi was the mainstay of trade in the Gulf as recently as the 1960s. And the Ramayana is popular in Indonesia along with Hindu names mixed in with Muslim names. The Flamenco dance form in Spain credits its origins to Rajasthan!

With this long history – India is rightly credited with being enterprising and the unleashing of growth when India got its second independence (1991) is testimony to pent up energy.

Here comes the but...! The growth has primarily been driven by (in the Indian context) a handful of iconic companies and individuals. This is not to underestimate the role of a stable and strong growth of Indian family businesses that are quietly contributing to wealth creation. There is no particular need to rehearse them here, but it is clear that in telecoms, software and a few other sectors that rely on a self-fuelling market dynamic of the middle class there has been very rapid growth. Government policy makers have recognised that all is not shining and that inclusive growth strategies are needed. Is there now a gold rush to the “bottom of the pyramid” by the same cohort of successful people with the resources to access these large untapped markets?

We have to ask another question. Are we really dependent on a few hundred companies to provide the millions of jobs? Or do we see the necessity for a society that has to look after itself and its communities?  Maybe the hundreds of companies will grow into thousands of companies, but who is to lead them and grow them?

Meanwhile we are left with a very large number of not so qualified young people (the so-called youth dividend) who lack the knowledge, skills, and opportunities to start and grow viable businesses. Yes – they may be enterprising, but it has to be something more than offering “Tel malish” (head massage with oil). Watch it on YouTube here.

The danger signals were flagged up this past few weeks in Tunisia and Egypt, where people who are frustrated by the lack of opportunity have taken to the streets. Fortunately India is not in that kind of place at the moment, but the growth bubble of the youth population may take us there in 10 or so years.

India needs a tangible change in its approach to encouraging entrepreneurship at all levels. The education system needs to create space for a practitioner approach to the topic. Over the past 10 years at University of Cambridge, this author has been developing methodologies in “education for entrepreneurship” as distinct from curricula “about” entrepreneurship.

In meeting fellow educators in India, as well as policy-makers and successful entrepreneurs and industrialists, it is evident that this distinction has not been understood with the result that the places where the youth congregate the most – at educational institutions – we are missing out on the opportunity of instilling an entrepreneurial spirit along with the skills, knowledge and opportunities to follow through. Apart from a lack of clarity about the nature of entrepreneurship education, we can probably only name about 20 Professors who are serious about this topic for the whole of India!

Until the senior policy makers, the PM’s advisory group and others clearly understand the distinction between “for and about” in enterprise education and the need for rapid scale-up of provision, we may remain a nation of job seekers that get increasingly desperate and we will mistake the energy of desperation to be that of entrepreneurship.

I hope there are enough people to disagree with this view to create a lively debate!

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Published on 17 February 2011