When economic indicators are not very promising, one thing which can bring cheers to everybody’s life is an entrepreneurial activity in social, cultural, educational and technological fields. These mavericks will bring about new hope and generate new space for creativity to manifest, connection to be forged and empathy to pervade across sectors, spaces and social segments.

If this is the question I have to ask myself, then I expect a political consensus to emerge around certain key strategies. And that is possible only through bipartisan approach, taking a nation building as a common goal. Surely, different political parties may not agree on a common agenda for most things but at least there could be a few areas on which consensus can be built. Innovation based entrepreneurship development could be one such area.

What do we need to do to promote entrepreneurship.

a)   As I mentioned earlier, five steps involving a very difficult and risky journey of an innovator/entrepreneur are: [a] idea to proof-of-concept, [b] proof-of-concept to prototype, [c] prototype to product, [d] product to utility, and [e] proof of market, and development of supply chain, certification, testing, branding, etc. more than ninety percent ideas are aborted before the final stage for want of support. The country badly needs a nurturant eco-system for each of these stages of innovations. I am not sure if Rs 200 crore fund announced by finance minister P Chidambaram will be used for such risky steps in value chain or only for scaling up the solutions which have survived in market place. But regardless of this, parliament should really seriously discuss the health of eco-system for these stages. If we don’t sustain the spirit of the creative people during these stages, country will not get boost in the long term growth engine.

b)   We should realise that not all innovations need to be diffused through market channels. Some need to be diffused through social channels. For different kind of ventures, we need different scaling up strategies. Social diffusion of eye testing or haemoglobin or iron testing facility for villages may not diffuse only through market channels. One of the innovators awarded under Anjani Mashelkar award for the innovation for the elderly has developed Rs 5000 solution for testing iron deficiency among people in a few seconds. Every primary health centre and school should have this device. Will public procurement policy ever encourage such innovations? Will market ever reach such facilities among the poorest people? When have we spent time to take annual roll call of all such technologies and institutional models of importance for common people and then audit all polices from the perspective of scaling these? Never. National Innovation Council has not spent ten minutes on this issue so far unfortunately. Hope things will change some day.

c)   Should scale be made enemy of sustainability? Not every innovation can and should diffuse widely. Entire agro-biodiversity would have been lost by now if such was the case. If Dhimaji district of Assam has high iron content in water which does not get completely removed even with the best local technology, will we develop water filters for possible diffusion only in one or few such districts? What is the incentive given to private actors to invest in products which will have limited diffusion?  Should such needs be neglected. Will this not lead to birth of more ULFAs? Incidentally, leadership of ULFA, ‘insurgent’ organisation came up from this region mainly. We can neglect such localised needs at our own peril. The project of keeping the country together will not be fulfilled if we continued to neglect such needs. I can list hundred other similar localised problems which are not getting attention of formal R and D system and we will not encourage local innovations either in those areas.

d)   We need to de-emphasise ex situ model of incubating entrepreneurship and encourage in situ model that we evolved at GIAN and National Innovation Foundation. In most cases, budding entrepreneurs cannot leave their families and location to stay in an incubator. Occasional meetings are fine but sustained long term stay in incubators is not possible for many entrepreneurs. We need to nurture the start-ups where they are.

I hope that we will gather the courage to converge and make budding innovators and entrepreneurs feel wanted and nurtured in the country. If innovators and entrepreneurs are not happy, future is bleak. Let us turn the leaf and for once and show that India can indeed develop an inclusive and assimilative model of development.