Social Entrepreneur Role in Social and Rural Development
Written by: Dr.Gandham Sri Rama Krishna
Published in International Journal of Commerce, Global Association of Commerce
and Management, Salem, January-June, 2015, Vol.2, No.1, PP. 236-242, ISSN:
2394-9597.
Abstract
Social
Entrepreneurship is gaining increasing attention as a concept which challenges
academic, bureaucratic and professional approaches to entrenched social
problems. A social entrepreneurial
concept of applying business acumen to service and enterprise development for
social and economic empowerment is thus likely to challenge strongly held
beliefs about effective business practice and about the delivery of social and community
services. Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to
society’s most pressing social problems. They are ambitious and persistent,
tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change.
Rather than leaving societal needs to the government or business sectors,
social entrepreneurs find what is not working and solve the problem by changing
the system, spreading the solutions, and persuading entire societies to take
new leaps. Social entrepreneurs often seem to be possessed by their ideas,
committing their lives to changing the direction of their field. They are both
visionaries and ultimate realists, concerned with the practical implementation
of their vision above all else. Social entrepreneurs act as the change agents
for society, seizing opportunities others miss and improving systems, inventing
new approaches, and creating solutions to change society for the better. Each
social entrepreneur presents ideas that are user-friendly, understandable,
ethical, and engage widespread support in order to maximize the number of rural
people that will stand up, seize their idea, and implement with it. Every
leading social entrepreneur is a mass recruiter of local change makers a role
model proving that citizens who channel their passion into action can do almost
anything. A Social entrepreneur comes up with new solutions to social and rural
problems and then implements them on a large scale. A social entrepreneur
recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize,
create, and manage a venture to make social change. Unlike business
entrepreneurs, they don’t measure performance in profit and returns, but assess
success by the impact they have on society and often work through nonprofits
and citizen groups.
Introduction
Social
Entrepreneurship is gaining increasing
attention as a concept which challenges academic, bureaucratic and
professional approaches to entrenched social problems. The notion of social
entrepreneurship embraces the idea that business acumen can be applied to
community causes in an empowering way such that there is a real transfer of
economic power to significantly disadvantaged groups and individuals. Social
entrepreneurship is the process of bringing about social change on a major
scale. Social entrepreneurs function as the agents of change, questioning the
status quo, grabbing the new yet overlooked opportunities, and changing the
world for the better. Today, they are making up for the shortcomings of the
bureaucracies and government. The idea of entrepreneurship places emphasis on
the following;
ð Creative
and innovative approach
ð Application
of business acumen to social goals
ð Opportunities
for combining for-profit and not-for-profit initiatives
ð Improved
economic prosperity for disadvantaged constituencies
ð Individual
capacities for problems solving
ð Responsibilities
as well as rights as encompassed by the notion of mutual responsibility.
“A
hand up not a handout. It is neither top down nor bottom up. Rather, it is
insider out”. Social entrepreneurship promotes
notions of mutual obligation and individual responsibility; it is seen to have
the potential to be aligned with the interests of conservative politics. As well as gaining an understanding of
current patterns of contribution from business, through a developmental
approach the research aimed to explore the scope for business to embrace
corporate social investment as a planned initiative strategically directed towards the
integration of economic and social goals, which would lead to well distributed
gains in economic and social well-being. Economic empowerment means the
creation of adequate and sustainable jobs for the unemployed, or, in the
absence of jobs, and adequate social wage.
A
social entrepreneurial concept of
applying business acumen to service and enterprise development for social and
economic empowerment is thus likely to challenge strongly held beliefs about
effective business practice and about the delivery of social and community services.
The
International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that
ð Nearly,
160 million women and men are officially counted as unemployed and another
billion or more people are underemployed or working poor. Moreover, 500 million
new entrants to the labour force are expected over the next ten years, mostly
women and youth.
ð The
ILO emphasizes the critical role that entrepreneurs play in creating
employment. It carries out significant promotional and technical activities to
assist governments, employers’ and workers’ organizations create more and
better jobs in countries around the world. Enterprise is at heart of employment
creation. Both public and private sectors create employment. While the majority
of people aspire to work in the formal economy, the majority of new work
opportunities in the last decade have been generated in the informal economy.
Though significance deficits exist in the formal economy, workers in the
informal economy are often poorly paid, unprotected, unregulated and
unrepresented.
ð Given
the large and growing numbers of people that decent work and better lives, the
pressure is on our political leaders to respond to people’s demands
worldwide. ILO defined Decent Work is
the concept that integrate all forms of work and employment with rights, social
protection and voice or representation.
Initiatives and
Policy Imperatives in the Promotion of
Women Entrepreneurship
Women
entrepreneurs engaged in business due to push and pull factors which encourage
women to have an independent occupation and stand on their own legs. Women
entrepreneurship development is an essential part of human resource
development. Women have become aware of
their existence their rights and their work situation. In this dynamic world,
women entrepreneurs are an important part of the global quest for sustained
economic development and social progress. Several policies and programmes are
being implemented for the development of women entrepreneurship in India. When
a woman is empowered it does not mean that another individual becomes powerless
or is having less power. On the contrary, if a woman is empowered, her
competencies towards decision-making will surely influence her family’s
behaviour.
Women entrepreneurship
development is an essential part of human resource development. The development
of women entrepreneurship is very low in India, especially in the rural areas.
Entrepreneurship amongst women has been a recent concern. Women have become
aware of their existence their rights and their work situation. However, women
of middle class are not too eager to alter their role in fear of social
backlash. The progress is more visible among upper class families in urban
cities. Any understanding of Indian women, of their identity, and especially of
their role taking and breaking new paths, will be incomplete without a walk
down the corridors of Indian history where women have lived and internalized
various role models.
In the words of
president APJ Abdul Kalam," empowering women is a prerequisite for
creating a good nation, when women are empowered, society with stability is
assured. Empowerment of women is essential as their thoughts and their value
systems lead to the development of a good family, good society and ultimately a
good nation". When a woman is empowered it does not mean that another
individual becomes powerless or is having less power. On the contrary, if a
women is empowered her competencies towards decision- making will surely
influence her family's behavior.
Honourable Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s
historical Independence Day speech seems to have
galvanised the nation into action, with his emphatic mentions of skill India
movement and the ‘Make in India’ statement inviting multinationals to leverage
India for manufacturing. In the wake of these announcements that can have far
reaching impact on the Indian ecosystem, we looked at the various states and
their maturity in encouraging startups and entrepreneurs.
Then
we have example of Amul Products. “Amul”
was created by government initiative and by the passion of people like Dr.
Kurien. It wanted to bring out change in the way milk was produced and
distributed on a massive scale. The vision was big, there was passion, there
was capital, there was terrific leadership, sustained and involved engagement
with the grass-roots, and the formation of partnerships to create the impact
via the business. They have to think entrepreneurship.
Chill
Breeze opines that an indifferent government and an inefficient bureaucracy
have ensured the poorer strata of society remain deprived of the benefits of
development. They are still bogged down by unemployment, poverty, illiteracy
and lack of medical facilities. But with the arrival of social entrepreneurship
all that is set to change. In the past,
it was the job of NGOs to make a difference to the lives of the less fortunate.
But the problem was that they did not have enough funds to bring about sweeping
changes in society. Enter the social entrepreneur, who took it upon himself to
revolutionize things.
While
business entrepreneurs aim to generate profits, social entrepreneurs aim to
improve social values. But they differ
from non-governmental ogranisations(NGOs) in that they aim to make broad-based,
long-term changes, instead of few immediate small-time results. They recognize
when a section of the society is stuck and offer innovative ways to break out
of its stagnant state. They find out the things that don’t work and alter the
system to solve the problems. They consider the affected people as part of the
solution and not as passive beneficiaries. They propagate the solution and
persuade the whole society to adopt it.
Recently,
the first international conference on social entrepreneurship was held in
India, at the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences(TISS). Some of
eminent personalities participated and delivered lectures in this conference
regarding to social entrepreneurship.
ð Pooja
Warier told that social entrepreneurship
as a tool for social change, encourage the development of social
entrepreneurship in India, and create mutually beneficial links between social
entrepreneurship and institutions.
ð Sarah
Dodds said that strongly believes in the power of individuals to change the
community and eventually the world.
ð Stan
Thekaekara in his opines, just change attempted a deconstruction of the concept
of social entrepreneurship from the perspective of people who struggle to live
everyday.
ð Sunil
Abraham feels though that social entrepreneurship is a western concept, a
concept that is market-friendly and places too much spotlight on the social
entrepreneurs.
ð Dr.S.Parasuraman
has argued that India is in a paradoxical state, with a few individuals
accumulating wealth whereas a vast majority are losing livelihoods, are
landless and are continuously marginalized. From this, he said, arises the need
for entrepreneurial approaches towards social change. Some examples from India
are already being pointed to as successful models of social entrepreneurship –
SEWA, Just Change, Chidline, Fair Trade Forum, Barefoot College, and Aravind
Eye Care, dings of the interior.
Some
entrepreneurship is quickly revolutionizing the less privileged sections of
India. Here are some of the more prominent social entrepreneurs in India:
ð Dr.
Govindappa Venkataswamy and Thulasiraj D. Ravilla established Aravind Eye
Hospital in 1976. Till date, it has treated more than 2.3 million outpatients
and carried out more than 2.7 lakh operations in 2006-07, about two-third of
them free.
ð Barefoot
College, started by Bunker Roy in 1972, has made innumerable school dropouts in
villages into “barefoot” doctors, engineers, architects, teachers, designers
and communications.
ð Self-Employed
Women’s Association (SEWA) started by Ela Bhatt in 1972 provides financial,
health, insurance, legal, childcare, vocational and educational services to
poor self-employed women, who comprise its members.
ð Bhartiya
Samruddhi Investments and Consulting Services started by Vijay Mahajan is the
first microfinance project to lend to the poor.
ð Narayana
Hrudayalaya Institute of Medical Science and its network of hospitals run by
Devi Shetty perform about three dozen surgeries a day. Of these, 60 percent are
carried out at nominal cost or free of charge.
ð Technology
Information Design Endeavour (TIDE) run by S. Rajagopalam and Svati Bhogle
supports the development of financially rewarding and environmentally-friendly
methods invested by leading research institution into thriving
enterprises.
Need for Agriculture and Rural Development in
India
Since
1997, more than 25,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide. Most of these
suicides have occurred in states: Maharastra, Karnatak, Andhra Pradesh. The
suicides are eloquent a testimony as any about the desperate plight of rural
India. Some 850 million Indians depend on agriculture for a living. According
to Census of India, 2001 nearly 58.4 percent of total workforce depend up on
agriculture sector. In State of Andhra Pradesh 39.6 percent are depend up
agriculture allied activities. Most are small-scale farmers, with between one
and three acres to cultivate. Many are dry-farmers, with no access to
irrigation. Most are illiterate, with few skills to offer-if there were jobs
available off the farm.
The
government has set an ambitious target of boosting annual growth to 10 percent
from its current impressive 8 percent level. There is no way to achieve this
without pushing the country’s huge agricultural sector from a sluggish 1.5 to
3.2 percent annual growth rate to at least 4 percent. With little funds to
invest, the government is counting on private investment from large
corporations to modernize Indian agriculture: shift more production from grains
to fruits and vegetables, build a cold chain to get produce to Indian and
foreign urban consumers who will pay a premium for fresh produce and processed
foods, consolidate small holdings and streamline agricultural production. India
is the last underdeveloped agriculture frontier for the world’s large
agribusiness concerns. Its varied climate and relatively large area of arable
land mean a large variety of crops can be grown year-round. A veritable
stampede is on by some or the biggest players in India and in the world-
Reliance, Mahindra, Bharti, ITC but also Monsanto, Cargill, Wal-Mart and
Carrefour – to stake a claim to the vast, under- exploited domain of Indian
agriculture.
The
need is great. An astonishing 40 percent of world’s poor live in India,
including one-third of the world’s malnourished children. A report to the
United Nations General Assembly last September entitled the Extent of Chronic
Hunger and Malnutrition in India asserted that hunger and malnutrition are
bigger problems in India. As India’s economy has taken off, the gap between
those who have enough to eat and those who don’t has widened. And while India
claims self-sufficiency in food grains, and even exports grain, it has failed
to make food available to all its citizens who need it. This year, for the
first time in decades, India was forced to import food grains in order to meet
its targets for basic food reserves. Will the corporatization of Indian
agriculture deliver food to India’s hungry and improve the lives of poor farmers.
While
the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s boosted production enormously and
made India self-reliant in food grains, the environmental and social costs were
also staggering. Production of grains is now falling. Pesticide use in India is
also very high, resulting in high levels of pesticide residues present
throughout the food chain. And India is
facing a severe water crisis. With 17 percent of the world’s population, India
has just 4 percent of the world’s freshwater. India’s surface water is highly
polluted by untreated sewage and industrial effluents, while its underground
aquifers are being depleted at a far
greater rate than they are being recharged, resulting in falling water. The massive industrialization of Indian agriculture will put new pressures on
India’s stressed water supply.
India
has the great good chance, as a developing country, to choose to develop
differently. It can try to invest its own paradigm for an agricultural future
that increases yields and better
connects producers to consumers but that also improves farmer’s lives, lifts
millions out of poverty, conserves water and cleans up the environment. There
are many efforts in India to do just this. Organic farming is more labour
intensive than industrial farming- and India has no shortage of rural manpower.
Dr.
Swaminathan is the revered father of India’s Green Revolution. His thinking
about agricultural development appropriate for India and its rural poor has led
him in the intervening decades to embrace a philosophy of “human-centered
development”. He is committed to making India’s small-scale farmers empowered
producer by giving them the knowledge and the access to cutting-edge
technologies- including genetically engineered crops where beneficial – they
need. He is also committed to pursuing practices that are environmentally
sustainable.
Dr.
Swaminathan’s vision comprehends “the twin challenges of poverty eradication
and natural resources conservation.” He uses a combination of strategies,
including micro-credit, water conservation, natural soil enrichment, wireless
internet Kiosks to connect farmers to information, and increase their
knowledge, and cooperatives where farmers can consolidate their buying and
selling power. He advocates weaning India from the monocultures of wheat and
rice, and for farmers to return to cultivating the highly nutritious and
locally adopted grain crops of millet. An Evergreen Revolution such as Dr.
Swaminathan’s has the potential to bring sustainable, equitable solutions to
India’s agrarian crisis. It can also create a desperately needed new
agricultural paradigm, not only for other countries in the developing world but
for a developed world increasingly alarmed by the environmental costs and
health risks of industrial agriculture. Large-scale industrial agriculture was
an invention of the second industrial revolution and the 20th-
century. Along the lines of what it achieved in record time with
telecommunications and information technology, India has within its power the
potential to lead a 21st- century revolution in agriculture.
In
the context of technology for rural areas the concepts of technological
determinism and technology transfer are equally important. It aims at using
traditional skills and capabilities and making them commercially competitive.
Technologies which will result in low cost production and in products
marketable close to the point of manufacture, particularly, in rural sector,
will be promoted. Government will give preference to products of such
technologies in its purchases. Specific areas of thrust have also been
identified as agriculture including dry
land farming, optimum use of water resources, increased production of pulses
and oilseeds, provision of drinking water in rural areas, low cost housing etc.
Poverty Alleviation Through Micro-credit:
In India alone, over two-thirds of its
one billion plus population is poor. Each day, 35,000 children under 5 die of
starvation or preventable diseases. It’s the largest poverty epidemic in Indian
history. Economic progress in countries such as India and China has the
potential to lift millions out of
poverty. For decades fighting poverty
has been the responsibility of
government, but they have been generally ineffective. Non-governmental
organizations(NGOs)on the other hand, are strong advocates for change, creatively
complementing government poverty programmes, but lacking the capacity to
transform the lives of the three billion poor.
One such approach is micro-finance.
Micro-financial institutions (MFI) focus on creating micro-entrepreneurs by
providing access to micro-credit. While there are mixed reports on the overall
impact of such programmes. MFI as vehicles have the ability to impact very
significant numbers of rural people.
Economic engines of the private sector
to the rural poor. Micro-loans make a small-scale contribution by providing
them access to cash for personal needs such as payment of dowry, medical
emergency or repayment of prior loans. But as economic engines, the loans have
severe limitations. Banks and micro-finance intermediaries making the loans say
they are intended to empower the rural poor to start and run their own
business. Yet, the interest rates charged are often very less percent for the
poorest. A recent study of 50 micro-credit programmes in 17 villages in South
India showed that less than 5 percent of recipients used the money to start
small business. The current debate on
the future of micro-finance is about how to cope with its growing pains, as it
seeks to roughly double the number of loan recipients to 175 million by 2015. If
poverty alleviation were simply a matter of lending $ 100 to all the world’s
poor, poverty could be eradicated easily, it would cost about $300 billion
spent on assistance over the last half century. Micro-credit can’t build equity
or jobs on the required scale. From
farming to alternate fuels, rural areas have great potential for developing
sustainable industries, and yet there is almost no serious effort to realize
that potential. Micro-credit has created to attract more private investment and
commercial activity in deprived communities. Micro-credit brought private
investment capital to millions of poor people on a small scale and even proved
it could be profitable. The challenge now is to bring investment capital on a
larger scale to start business, with its
scalability, risk-taking and accountability for results, is in a position to do
this. Without vibrant economic activity where the poorest live, the global
fight against poverty will be swamped by the nearly 100 million population
increase in developing countries each year.
Currently, there are approximately 90
million people being served by a range of microfinance products and services.
Yet the reality is that there are more than 500 million potential microfinance
customers around the world. This major untapped market is finally being
recognized for its profit potential by bankers, equity investors, and
entrepreneurs. The current microfinance
market consist of cooperatives, NGOs and commercial banks providing a range of
products and services. Fueling their expansion is a crowded playing field of
grant-makers, debt and equity investors, technology innovators and technical
service providers. But a more strategic collaboration of all these players is
going to be necessary to expand the fight against poverty through micro-credit.
The Micro-credit Summit Campaign’s 2005 Annual Report provided statistics on
over 3,000 micro-credit institutions, many of whom serve less than 5,000
clients. There needs to be further cooperation among NGOs, and Banks, with the
latter now entering this market in increasing numbers. Moreover, micro-credit
provides must also recognize the limits of financial products in improving the
lives of poor people and explore alternatives beyond the industry’s current
scope of traditional micro-credit.
Areas which can be
applied to this field;
ð Values,
beliefs, moral reasoning and ethical practice
ð Knowledge
and skills in interpersonal communication, group facilitation and community
processes
ð Strengths
perspective
ð Understanding
of and commitment to social justice
ð A
discipline focus on the social,
political, environmental and economic context of social and personal
problems.
Social
Entrepreneurship Awareness Programmes:
Some of them are;
ð Employment
generation
ð Utilization
of local raw materials- agricultural products, mineral and human resources
ð Satisfaction
of local markets and needs
ð Increasing
food production
ð Population
control
ð Conservation
of energy
ð Promotion
of exports
ð Import
substitution
ð Minimum
damages to environment
ð Exploitation
of local advantages of the country
ð Exploitation
of aptitudes in the people and their
skills.
ð Should
use locally available resources.
ð Use
of local energy sources.
ð Should encourage participation of local community
ð Should
be labour intensive, energy reducing and cost effective.
Some of the important aspects of this approach are
enumerated below:
ð Science
and Technology has established its viability in terms of products, processes,
technologies and development models, which have tremendous potential in
addressing the problems of rural areas.
ð Every
community is empowered to pursue its own vision, have its own strategic
development plan in an enabling environment with access to all resources
required for its effectiveness in realizing its vision.
ð The
well-being and dignity of every person, family and community are ensured.
ð Every
person has access to information, technology and resources to realize his full
potential and capacity to use it.
ð Encourage
the convergence of existing and new development initiatives to respond in a
holistic way to the community development plans and defined needs.
ð People’s
participation is the key factor for all initiatives.
India,
according to some estimates, has the largest number of NGOs per capita. Most of them are doing a glorious job in their
respective domains, impacting the lives of citizens in localized spheres of
activities. But given the size and multitude of problems confronting India a
different approach is also surely required. One that unleashes the
entrepreneurial energies of the people and dove-tails into the market economy.
One that creates financial sustenance if not independence. Entrepreneurship is
an acknowledged method of job creation and income creation.
Conclusion:
The
social development strategy is to alleviate poverty through generation of wage
employment programmes, build rural infrastructures, provide and maintain basic
services in the rural areas with an ultimate object of improving the living
standard. Now, it is high time that the global microfinance community adopted
hard-nosed business strategies to help an even greater number lift themselves
out of poverty.
Today,
everybody live in an age of
entrepreneurship. When Bill Gates, the founder and CEO of Microsoft or Anita
Roddick, founder of the Body Shop seem to be better known around the world than
most heads of state, one might conclude that the age of the entrepreneur has
arrived. He or she exercises influence well beyond economics, helping to shape
political, environmental and cultural arenas. Entrepreneurs of large
multinational corporations have had a distinctly important role in shaping
today’s process of LPG.
Science
and technology development is confined only to cities. Whereby the under
developed rural area remind as it is even after sixty two years of Indian independence. It is the duty of
government and voluntary organizations to go to rural areas and bring awareness
about second green revolution, women empowerment, health, education, use of
rural resource, and social entrepreneurship. They should also encourage rural
people to participate in local panchayat
administration to bring transparency in administration.
Reference:
1. Balaraj
Sigh(2003), Entrepreneurship Development, Wisdom Publications, New Delhi.
2. Dr.
C.B.Gupta, Dr. S.S.Khankar(2006), Entrepreneurship and Small Business
Management, Sultan Chand and Sons, New Delhi.
3. C.V.Bakshi(2001),
Entrepreneurship Development, Excel Publications, New Delhi.
4. Jain(2002),
Hand Book of Entrepreneurship Development, Wisdom Publications, New Delhi.
5. James.
C. Collins, William C.Lazier(1992), Beyond Entrepreneurship, Prentice-Hall, New
Jersey.
6. Madhurima
Lal(2000), Entrepreneurship, Excel Publications, New Delhi.
7. Mathew
J. Manimala(2004), Entrepreneurship Theory at the Crossroads, Willey India, New
Delhi.
8. Tabarrok(2000),
Entrepreneurial Economics, Oxford University Press. New Delhi.
9. Vasant
Desai(2006), Small-Scale Industries and Entrepreneurship, Himalaya Publishing
House, Mumbai.
10. Vasant
Desai(1997), Dynamics of Entrepreneurship Development and Management, Himalaya
Publishing House, Mumbai.
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