HOW CAN INDIA UNLEASH ITS INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURIAL POTENTIAL


Today India is amongst the fastest growing economy of the world. It is 10th largest economy of world and is predicted to be 3rd largest by 2035. India can boast of having world’s largest talent pool. Major global players are trying to explore new opportunities to tap the fresh brains and new markets across India. These developments have created a wave of INDIA SHINING. Indians were reckoned for their intellectual prowess from time immemorial. With such a massive intellectual fraternity active in the global arena, it has once again proved its credentials as intellectual leaders. Stalwarts like Amartya Sen , C.K Prahlad, L.N Mittal , Indira Nooyi , Vikram Pandit etc have shown that Indians are competent to drive global economy.

Taking a kaleidoscopic view of Indian history, we see that it is enriched with a rich Cultural heritage it was on the echelons of innovation and entrepreneurial development in olden times. India was on the centre of knowledge dissemination Nalanda and Takshila were the universities of international fame and attracted the scholars from all over the world. We had intellectual leaders in every field like Rishi SHUSHRUT who performed first surgery in the world, Rishi KANIK formulated that all matter are made up of KANA which today we call ATOM, CHANAKYA was one of the first economist who formulated many modern economic laws in his book ARTHASHASTRA etc. India was also in the centre of world trade. Spices and handicrafts were amongst the most profitable business propositions in those eras.

With the passage of time, India was engulfed in a dark phase that ruined India and left India as an over populated under developed divided country. During the sublimation from the Golden Bird to the land of snake charmers, India observed lot of exploitation from various rulers and dynasties. In the development graph if we trace the growth since the origin of civilizations we will have the maximum negative growth. We had an innovative civilization and different technologies were used by our ancestral, but alas we only get these references in old mythological books. We were never able to see them. With advent of generations’ indigenous knowledge was not inherited properly. The little knowledge that was inherited got slowly destroyed by different rulers for their personal gains.

A point which is still pondering my mind is, with all the resource available in the country why we still not able to exploit our resources to 100% capacity. What are the potholes in the development drive which still haunts us for underachievement of our targets. Why a small country like Malayasia that got independence contemporary to India is far ahead in economic development. Directly coming to the point as a student these are the few points, which I would like to raise on the floor for general consideration.



1- PSYCHOLOGICAL ENGINEERING-
It is perhaps the most important factor in consideration to coming generation. The traditional conservative style of teaching has subsided our pragmatic approach and reduced our risk taking ability. People with high profile credential are also narrow vision people who are not able to look beyond a secured and risk free Govt Job. Our teaching pattern has made us made us a job oriented person. They have made us captive of old knowledge without any practical exposure. This indeed has hampered our ability to think beyond the obvious. When a child does not get any encouragement for his out of box creative thinking, he slowly loses interest in creative thinking. This ultimately stymies his innovating ability. If the pedagogy is modified to a practical oriented teaching I think we will be able generate more innovators and entrepreneurs for developing India.

2- EDUCATION SYSTEM-
In India, there should be a uniform teaching and evaluation system across all the schools. The medium of knowledge administering should be English. This initiative will allow smooth transition of a student from school to a professional college without disturbing their learning and intellectual equilibrium. This will help the less privileged person to be at par with their other counterparts, which otherwise face a problem of English medium after they pass their senior secondary and start preparing for competitive exams. This is a major problem as many of the bright students compromising on low profile jobs because of the language problem. Also in all the streams, there should be some compulsory courses that should stress on commercial aspects of the course and entrepreneurship development. This will help us to tap entrepreneurs at a very early stage.

3- Use of ICT and Internet based services –
We should make extensive use of ICT and other web based services to provide quality education to the distant pockets. It will help us to provide quality education to the rural people in a cost effective manner. With more use of these technologies, we will be better connected to various online study materials, which otherwise is unaffordable. As ICT is capital-intensive proposition, initially government should invest heavily in infrastructural development necessary for the mushrooming of these web-based services. Interconnection of various knowledge centres will help us in dissemination of knowledge in a much faster pace among the masses, which will lead to rapid growth of the country.

4- Innovations from the bottom of the pyramid –
We should make efforts to harness various innovations made in the rural areas. They are the people who make tailor made innovations to meet their daily life challenges. Indian villages are full of innovations and government should take adequate steps to promote and refine these innovations to cater a larger target market. Few NGO’s are taking efforts to promote ITK (indigenous technical knowledge), like initiative of Dr Anil Gupta with the help of an NGO Shrishti is a classical example in front of us. These types of honeybee network will help us to promote unknown innovations which otherwise would have lost with passage of time. These innovations have highest social benefits and can cater the needs of the people in bottom of pyramid in a cost effective manner. E.g. a farmer innovated a Royal Enfield driven puddler for paddy transplanting because he did not had sufficient funds to buy a tractor and a tractor driven puddler. This innovation is very beneficial for small and medium farmers who cannot afford expensive machinery.

5- Research funding and accountability-
In India 95% of research is public funded which many times lead to lack of accountability. In US 80% of the research is private funded which leads to proper accountability of researcher. In India, there is less inclination of a person towards research due to lack of glamour and incentives in the field. There are various innovations lying in the workshops of apex research institutes(IIT, IISc, CSIR funded institutes) that are in need of marketing partner, who can effectively market the products to serve a large segment. Induction of private players will help in creating buffer of industrial backup for the innovations, which need a large-scale marketing.

6- Motivation new generation entrepreneurs to become entrepreneurs-
Indian managers are respected worldwide due to their ability to give excellent outputs within a limited resources available. We should make encouraging policies to transform new generation managers to become entrepreneurs. With new entrepreneurs coming in the open competition, we will observe more innovations and technology improvement from budding enterprises to stay competitive in their business.

7- Marketing the innovation –
Before going further I just want to put a point in front of all that is why an Indian Vada Pao is has a regional demand with a maximum command price of Rs 10. Where as a foreign product with nearly the same ingredients that is a Burger In Mc Donald’s has a sky rocketing prices. Why a vada pao is still confined to Maharashtra where as Mc Donalds has a worldwide presence. With retail outlets across world why Mc Donalds is amongst the most trusted and respected brand in the world. In this case, I believe lack of ‘sense of marketing’ and ‘sense of presenting’ of our products has confined our innovations to few specific segments only. We are not able to bring pan India presence in them. Our complacency is the greatest hurdle, which has restricted us to a narrow vision. To overcome this problem we should have regular capacity building exercises to broaden the horizon of all the workers. Any activity is a collective effort so we should think in terms of team building and expanding the horizons of the team to reap collective benefits. We also have to stress on quality standards and quality improvement of our product so that they not only are acceptable in international market but also become a beacon of excellence.



Conclusion
All these points have made us to ponder over our current style of functioning. In addition, the status, which India has in the international fraternity, is also not satisfactory with respect to innovation and development. Therefore, we should have more incubation centres for entrepreneurship development so that they are properly guided while establishing their enterprise. It will boost the morale of the young generation to take up entrepreneurship as a career. We should also make opportunities available to all as per their abilities. There should be no discrimination on selection of a meritorious student and should be given fair chances in competition. It will help in inducing a confidence of new generation on the policy makers and will help in creating a national harmony. National Harmony is the main ingredient in making a congenial environment for development of new generation entrepreneurs and innovators. Therefore, we should collectively strive to bring peace, harmony, unity among the fellow citizens so that India could prosper in leap and bounds.