Back to “Good Work”
Entrepreneurs
– from village shopkeepers to owners of large industrial conglomerates –
rule the economy. Economies have, in comparison to other influencing
factors, an inordinately high impact on societal and environmental
well-being. It follows, therefore, at the cost of oversimplifying
something that is exceedingly complex, that any attempt to create
positive outcomes for people and our planet needs to be based on a
strategy that gets entrepreneurs to run green and inclusive businesses.
We need to do this now, and in very large numbers to make good on the
slim chance we have left of creating a sustainable future. The price of
inaction has already become evident – widespread joblessness and a
ravaged eco-system.
In a rapidly changing world, we need to
understand, however, that the inherent complexity of the change we wish
to effect on a large scale requires an equally complex, multi-faceted
and systemic response that cannot be delivered by one organisation or a
consortium of the “like-minded”. We must therefore, create and
eventually mainstream innovative models of collaboration between sets of
diverse stakeholders; working together across sectors and at different
levels, to provide support services and an enabling environment to
budding entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurial attitudes and
resourcefulness run deep in India – from the busiest streets of Mumbai
to the remotest villages of poverty stricken regions in Uttar Pradesh
and Bihar. People’s strengths and their initiatives are, however,
stifled by a complex set of social and economic factors. Age-old
constraints imposed by social norms and lack of access to support
services prevent potential entrepreneurs from taking simple steps that
would transform their lives. Their inability to do so, in turn, means
that no new jobs are created, and the ecological footprint of goods and
services produced through overly centralised systems of production and
marketing continues to grow at an alarming rate.
There is a need to develop new, systemic
approach to enterprise development; driven by social innovation,
technology enabled connectivity and grassroots empowerment, particularly
among women. Unlike “schemes”, this approach would rely on the creation
of “platforms” that unleash entrepreneurship through co-creation of
local business solutions within the community; empowering hundreds of
thousands of entrepreneurs with tools to create their own futures and to
provide livelihood security to millions of people, who are otherwise
being left out of the Indian “growth story”.
Shortly before his death in 1977, E.F.
Schumacher had foreseen, with rare insight and prescience, an
alternative pathway to development that has become particularly relevant
in today’s times. Captured in “Good Work”, he says, “Experience shows
that whenever you can achieve smallness, simplicity, capital cheapness,
and nonviolence, or indeed, any of these objectives, new possibilities
are created for people, singly or collectively, to help themselves, and
that the patterns that result from such technologies are more humane,
more ecological, less dependent on fossil fuels, and closer to real
human needs than the patterns (or lifestyles) created by technologies
that go for giantism, complexity, capital intensity, and violence.”
It is time, perhaps, for humankind to get
back to “Good Work”. ■
Shrashtant Patara
spatara@devalt.org
Back to Contents
|