Assessing Government Initiatives Towards the Development of Entrepreneurship in India

Introduction

Entrepreneurship is a very crucial term for the development of the economy (Urbano, 2016; Aribaba et al., 2019). Entrepreneurs are significantly playing a crucial role in the economic development and solving the problem of unemployment of any country. Over the decades, India has been facing problems of unemployment, poverty, financial distress, uneven income distribution etc. When entrepreneur starts a business, it will provide jobs to many people that helps in boosting the economy (Tambunan, 2009). Despite having an education base and a huge technology-oriented infrastructure, India has not utilized its innovation and creativity potential fully. For this purpose, government of India has decided to take some initiatives and established various departments and policies. The establishment of the Technology and Innovation Policy, National Innovation Council, Introduction of Science, and coordination with educational institutions are some examples of such initiatives. There are many councils and structures under various ministries, whose prime objective is to serve the needs of entire research areas. In order to achieve the goals of sustainable economy, equal participation from all sections of society should be indulge for entrepreneurship (Verma and Gagandeep;2020). During budget speech¹ on 28th February 2015, finance minister said that “If we want to create job, then we need to make India as an investment destination, which allows them to start a business by abiding rules and regulations”. In India, educated youth is a job-seeker and they wish to join as labour workforce in any public or private sector. It has been assumed by them that they will be getting job after study and it will be the easiest option for them. Here, there is a strong need to make their minds for entrepreneurship and aligned them to be a job creator rather than job-seeker. Entrepreneurs are equipped with wide range of skills and possess various traits. Many researchers found traits like- immediate response to upgrade themselves as well as their the business surroundings (Tehseen et al, 2015), having passion about entrepreneurial activities (Korunka et al, 2003; Lee and Wong, 2004; Agarwal et al, 2016; Aggarwal 2019), better understanding in good interpersonal skills (Agarwal and Lenka, 2017), always ready to assume risks (Boermans et al, 2017), desire for new innovations and learning (Lenka et al, 2017), huge amount of confidence (Ferreira et al. 2017), etc. In the past time, the term entrepreneurship was recognized by the male dominant factor, which has resulted in huge gap for women entrepreneurship. Now the perspective of society has been changed towards women (Alam et.al., 2011) as it has been found that they are managing their personal life and work life together and are being considered as proficient in their work. This can be only possible with the continuous support of self-help groups (SHG), help from Non-Government Organization (NGOs), education level and liberalization policies (Mathew & Panchanatham, 2011) and due to which women got upgraded platforms and status quo. On the basis of gender, both factors are considered as two important poles which exhibits variations of behavior but they have resemblance too on many aspects like motivation level, risk-aversion behavior, self-fulfillment, startup activities, internal locus of control (Alsos et al, 2006; Ajzen, 2002; Bird,1988; Verma et al 2021). According to Birley (1989), the major difference between male and female entrepreneurs is the selection of their market-entry choices. According to Zeithaml and Rice (1987), Gorman et al (1997), and Ronstadt (1987) recommended that entrepreneurial programs should be outlined in such a way so that the potential entrepreneurs have fundamental knowledge of entrepreneurship so that they are capable of removing all hurdles for initiating their entrepreneurial careers. Brush (1992) has concluded that the similarities between male and female entrepreneurs are based upon some demographic features, business skill set and psychological trait; whereas dissimilarities have been found on the basis of occupation, educational background, motivational forces to start a new business and strategic approach for creation and growth of business. Prabha (2019) concluded that entrepreneurship education is quite significant for female students who are inclined towards entrepreneurship goal and found in her study that the innovativeness and attitude come only from entrepreneurial education. According to Souitaris et al, 2007, there are ample implications for entrepreneurial intentions and the outcomes are inclined with the results of past studies that showed that educational programmes upraise the entrepreneurial attitudes and intentions. V.V et al (1998) have designed a new research scale for entrepreneurial motivation and identified five core motivations like entrepreneurial core, individual core, social core, economic core and work core motivation. Gundry et al. (2002) examined the impact of factors like family, culture, industry on women originated enterprises. Hughes et al. (2012) concluded that there needs to be a strong inclusion of diverse voices in entrepreneurship field. Neneh (2017) found in his study that different types of family support are positively associated with the firm performance for any startups and also concluded that this is most crucial factor of entrepreneurship. Jennings et al (2013) in their research study recommended that entrepreneurship can only result from opportunity and strong need that will persuade entrepreneurs to achieve their goals. Goyal and Yadav (2014) found that there are immense challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in the developing countries. It may include socio-cultural bias, less infrastructural support, raising of funds, low levels of entrepreneurial education and low self-esteem. Hence, there is a strong need to overcome these issues and help women entrepreneurs by some assistance policy. Jantje (2020) contributed the new dimensions in the literature review by exploring on the key topic- social entrepreneurship orientation (SEO) and concluded how SEO affects social entrepreneurial performance for both novel start-ups and established industrial firms. Review of literature work is quite significant in research as it identifies the possible research gaps. After this critical literature review, new areas are identified for further research which demands for the new perspective of looking for various initiatives done so far by the government for exceling entrepreneurship. This chapter highlights the current innovative ecosystem of entrepreneurship and the challenges it faces. It also highlights the initiatives taken by the Indian government for the promotion of entrepreneurship development in India.