Social Innovation and
Job-Creation in India
The
Indian economy today generates lesser employment than the number of job
entrants in the market. It is estimated that over 30,000 young women and
men enter the labour market each day in India, of whom less than half
find employment in the current economic scenario1. If we
continue to have such high rates of unemployment, it can lead to social
problems of drug addiction and rising crime rates especially amongst the
youth. Opportunity has become one of the most perplexing questions of
our times. Job creation calls for innovation in social institutions.
India will
need to create decent work opportunities for 15 million people each year
over a period of the next 15 years to provide for its burgeoning young
population and the unemployed2. As the agriculture and
manufacturing sectors are unable to provide gainful employment to many,
the informal economy has a lot of potential to bring several of these
actors within its folds.
With a
growth rate of 10 percent per annum and employing 56 out of the 80
million in the total workforce, micro and small businesses can be
instrumental in addressing the problem of unemployment as they create
local jobs in large numbers3. Further, small businesses also
have the ability to adopt innovations and replicate them at scale. Thus,
any impetus given to this sector will have significant multiplier
effects on economic resilience and social well-being.
Growth of
these micro-enterprises in India and other emerging economies is
presently limited, owing to lack of support services and a conducive
ecosystem that nurtures their development. As developing countries
continue to struggle with limited fiscal capacity to create jobs and
absorb new entrants into the labour market, the attractiveness of
including entrepreneurship in job creation toolkits has grown.
With limited access points for accessing relevant information and
services, communities are often challenged in identifying pathways to
entrepreneurship. Using a social innovation methodology to reach out to
communities, identifying their contextual realities and evolving needs,
allows for gauging the types of tools and methods that can lead to
different results. This is particularly true for developing countries
where a gamut of needs exists and the way to service these needs cannot
be a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach.
The Work 4
Progress project of Development Alternatives and ‘la Caixa’ Foundation
has evolved out of a social innovation methodology to enable
micro-entrepreneurship led job creation in the poverty-stricken,
underserved regions of Bundelkhand and eastern Uttar Pradesh in Central
India characterised by limited access to opportunities and low levels of
resilience to the dynamic nature of markets. While there are multiple
agencies, both government and private, that engage in delivering a range
of services to micro enterprises, these often remain difficult to
comprehend and access. In a series of dialogue sessions, the need for
developing a convergent platform to enable various stakeholders to work
collaboratively was voiced.
This gave
birth to the Work 4 Progress Coalition which is a learning and action
platform to build a strong ecosystem for micro enterprise development in
the target geographies and enable co-creation of solutions to service a
network of 5000 entrepreneurs. The coalition in essence will be a joint
action task force to enable micro enterprise development among women and
youth. The members of the coalition consist of representatives from
government bodies like District Industries Commission, Rural Self
Employment Training Institute, NABARD, Financial Institutions, Academia
and Civil Society Organisations.
The
objectives of the stakeholder coalition are as follows:
• Promote a
listening and learning discourse on entrepreneurship and job creation
with various stakeholders through workshops, e-mailers, radio shows and
whatsapp.
• Undertake
collective action and influence local initiatives to help vulnerable and
marginalised communities access information, opportunities and
integrated businesses support services.
The launch
events of the coalition in both the geographies saw participation from
potential entrepreneurs, local government bodies, universities, training
and financial institutions. The events started with the Work 4 Progress
team giving context of the current situation i.e. the findings from the
dialogue sessions and then moved towards moderated discussions between
the stakeholders to identify existing gaps and synergy points. This led
to identifying the vision and mission of the coalition. These launch
events also saw the entrepreneurs raise their concerns and share real
life experiences from their entrepreneurship journey. The events threw
light on the existing gaps in the support eco-system and were helpful in
identifying potential solutions. Towards the end of the session, the
stakeholders were made to sign on a declaration to ensure commitment
towards the coalition and to facilitate ownership of the coalition.
From the
discussion during the launch events for both coalitions, the following
key points were brought forward:
• In order
to promote entrepreneurship in the regions, the coalition needs to
create awareness and opportunities especially for youth to take up micro
entrepreneurial activities for livelihood. The stakeholders, especially
representatives from the banks and training institutes felt that the
youth in these regions have both the opportunities and the means.
However, there needs to be a push to help the youth identify existing
means such as the internet to meaningfully employ it for livelihood
creation.
• While
there is need to constantly build capacities of the entrepreneurs to
help support them in their journey, it is equally important to build
capacities of other actors in the micro enterprise development space to
effectively respond to the growing needs of the entrepreneurs and
address challenges. It is here that the coalition will be helpful in
showcasing the power of convergence to bridge the existing gaps in
service delivery to entrepreneurs by various stakeholders.
Innovation
is the underlying principle of this Work 4 Progress project. This has
been demonstrated through the kind of tools being used. One such
innovative tool has been that of workshops in which women in the local
village communities were brought together to discuss their desires and
hopes and then given training to help them illustrate their aspirations
and needs on paper through the means of comic illustrations. This
approach is unique in identifying new ways of communicating with women
who are unable to read or write. It also uses comics as an illustrative
and interactive engagement tool.
To foster
the kind of socio-cultural changes required to build a
pro-entrepreneurship ecosystem, investments in entrepreneurship and
human capital through innovative institutional models can broaden the
pool of jobs as well as the number of people ready to fill them. This
would expand opportunity and lead to more inclusive economic progress.■
Endnotes
1 Labour Bureau, 2016
2 Bhattacharya, A. and Bijuparkar, A. (2017). India: Growth
and Jobs in the New Globalization. Published by Boston Consulting Group
and Confederation of Indian Industries
3 National Statistical Commission, 2012
Ayesha Bhatnagar
and Nishtha Tewari
abhatnagar@devalt.org
ntewari@devalt.org
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