Towards Inclusive Growth - Role of the Society

This is the third of the six part series on “Towards Inclusive Growth.”


Role of Society

There is an adage - A society deserves what it gets! So, I strongly feel, the society, its shared 'thinking' and 'doing' has a great deal to do if we as a society are to move towards inclusive and sustainable growth. Corporate and government can only create so many jobs. The real employment creation is going to happen through micro and small enterprises. Creating an ecosystem for wide spread opportunity based entrepreneurship is key to inclusive and hence more sustainable growth.

I had a friend in Sydney whose grandmother was a neighbor to Sachin Tendulkar's grandmother. Both the grand-mothers were once admitted in the same hospital and were on the adjacent beds. When Sachin went to visit his grand mother, she requested her friend to talk to Sachin out of his penchant of playing cricket at the cost of his studies. It is easy now to think what we "could have" missed if Sachin had heeded to the advise.

For one Sachin, we do not know how many such geniuses the nation has lost and will be losing in various fields, be it art, business, science, politics and so on, due to restrictive thinking of our society. (I am not saying they do that to harm their kids' prospects, on the contrary, but the collective conformance mindset is what I am referring to)

We as a society do not bat an eyelid while doing the wrong thing of advising our enterprising boys to either give up, or work on their entrepreneurial ideas after marriage. I also went through this strange experience - luckily, my then fiancée supported me when I confided in her that I may not last in my job for too long and she is marrying me and not my job.

I was recently talking to a student from Israel I met in USA. She mentioned that with so much of risk to life to think about, the risk capital and enterprise venture looks such a small risk to take, as an explanation to how Israel had such a good risk capital and innovation ecosystem.

Youth aspirations are growing and we are seeing a lot of first generation entrepreneurship. What can society do to play its part?

A lot!!!

- As a society we need to let our kids and youth grow in an environment where creativity is encouraged and non-conformity is not frowned upon.

- We need to let our youth know that there are other career options as well, apart from being a doctor or an engineer.

- A young eligible bachelor should not be worried about not being able to secure a good wife while also working towards an entrepreneurial goal

- In Silicon Valley, a failed entrepreneur does not feel the need to hide the facts. I had to close my Wizard Home Loans franchise business in 2008 as it was not working out and many people had the 'I told you it will not work' messages. They did not have time to suggest me how to succeed, but had a lot of time doing post-mortem, either with me or behind my back. We need to accept failures as a part of the journey. No entrepreneur wants to fail, but would feel encouraged to try if he/she knows that people will not laugh at or ostracize them for the failure. So, more acceptance of a failed entrepreneurial venture is what is called for.

- Sequel to the above point, I would encourage a very short societal fuse for a fraudulent entrepreneur and enterprise. Surprisingly, this is sorely lacking currently. We murmur, spend a lot of time at tea parties how a certain business is doing the wrong thing, but do not collectively do anything about it. This tendency encourages the wrong kind of people and thinking, and more importantly, discourages the right kind of talent venturing into enterprise world.

- Another area where genuine entrepreneurs need support is in risk capital. I would encourage successful entrepreneurs, wealthy people to allocate some of their investible surplus towards investing in early stage entrepreneurs. http://www.carmagroup.in/ gives you a mechanism to do this. This will help the entrepreneur, you as an investor and the nation at large.

Come; let us together make India an entrepreneurial society!