What’s preventing India’s youth from Entrepreneurship?

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We all know starting and running your own enterprise or business can be a challenging task, if not daunting. This is the prime reason behind most people choosing to pursue steady day jobs and regular work providing them with steady salaries. This mindset has lead to over two generations of Indians searching for employment in the form of government jobs and seeking out private sector employment.

So what’s caused this mindset? Well for starters, economic security has always been the prime motivator for any individual in this country. Also, economic security needs to come to us as quick as possible. For that, securing a job is the easiest way forward, as compared to working and setting up a business or a start up.

Our grandfathers and forefathers might not have possessed the sort of material comforts that we enjoy today. Fifty years ago, our country was a poor one (relatively speaking) and one simply did not have the capital to invest in a business or industry. There was always the fear of something going wrong. To an extent, that is prevalent even today, where one faces severe criticism if a business venture fails or goes kaput. Getting out of this mindset takes time and the only way out is to lead by example. After all, some one has to take the first step forward, right?

The fear of failure has been instilled in us since a very young age. Whether it was examinations, or studies, or sports, failure has been looked upon as taboo in Indian culture and society. It is not socially acceptable to fail and failures are often equated with losers when that is definitely not the case.

Wise men have often said, “Failure is not falling down, but refusing to get up”. It is okay to fail. Failure teaches you what not to do and makes you grow as an individual. You become tougher and stronger than people who don’t know what it means to fail. You become wiser and more adaptable to various situations that you encounter throughout life. Our former President, Dr. APJ Kalam once said that he’d rather read the biography of a failure than that of a successful person, because then you learn what not to do rather than harp on about the glories of other people.

So here is a surprising piece of information for all you people out there. 51% of India’s workforce is self-employed; salaried individuals and professional employees constitute only 15.5% of the total workforce. The remaining 33.5% of the workforce are made up of casual labourers who form the backbone of our total work strength, according to a survey by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) released in 2011. Rural India is leading the way in terms of numbers as Government data shows us that the number of self employed stands at 54.2% as opposed to a much lower number in the urban areas, which stands at 41.4%.

This goes to show that our doubts about entrepreneurship are misplaced to a large extent; blame it on a widespread perception problem! More than anything, we need to change our mindsets about failing and being independent rather than having to encourage entrepreneurship which is alive and kicking in this country.

Info source- https://mail.mospi.gov.in/index.php/catalog/143

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1 COMMENT

  1. One of the biggest reasons that prevent Indian youth from turning to the entrepreneurship is the lack of support from the government. This adds on to the risk of the failure. It is generally seen that the people with the right ideas fail to manage the funds. This is also acting as a barrier on the way of entrepreneurship. However, the slogan of ‘startup India, Stand up India’ serves a little hope.

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