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Women Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Rural Development in India

Women Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Rural Development in India

Badal Chandra Das (Vidyasagar University, India) and Sebak Kumar Jana (Vidyasagar University, India)
Copyright: © 2020 |Pages: 14
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-2704-7.ch012
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Abstract

Rural development implies both the economic betterment of the people living in rural areas as well as bringing out holistic development. Accordingly, government has made paradigm shift from individual-centric rural development support to creation of gainful self-employment as well as wage employment among rural masses. Entrepreneurship, in this direction, has become an important consideration. Economic growth of a region largely depends on the involvement of poor and marginal sections into the process of entrepreneurship development. Globally, a large number of unemployed youth and women are becoming self-employed through entrepreneurship and creating employment opportunities for others. Researchers have worked on women's empowerment, economic development, and their role on micro-credit movement. The work on role of women in sustainable development is very limited. This chapter has tried to analyse issues related to women entrepreneurships in light of sustainable rural development in India to meet the research gap in the current context of Indian rural economy.
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Introduction

In the field of research on social sciences, particularly on rural development, analysing the role of women and measuring effectiveness of their organisations are of immense importance. The age old deprivation, neglect and suppression of this weaker section of the society are now changing and their role in every process of development has gradually been acknowledged since the introduction of various gender related initiatives including Constitutional Amendments (73rd and 74th) Acts of India. Rural women are now playing different roles outside of their domestic sphere such as - functionaries of Panchayat, as organiser of thrift and credit group of women, as community resource persons, as facilitators and so many of other natures. They are now actively involved in cottage based small industries or handicrafts, rearing small ruminants at home for generating income as well as for self employment. Their participation in rural economy has also been considered very crucial. Several attempts have been made to encourage entrepreneurship among women in rural areas of India.

Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Rural Development

Entrepreneurship is defined as an engine for national prosperity through innovations and inventions. Ahmad and Seymour (2008) have pointed out entrepreneurship in light of certain parameters like- new goods or quality, introduction of a new method of production, the opening of a new market, · the conquest of a new source of supply of new materials or parts, and the carrying out of the new organisation of any industry. On the other hand, rural area in Indian context means, in general a geographical area where most of the people are engaged in agriculture, animal farming, cottage industries and having very close relationship among people and with nature. Prakash & Goodwin (2018) have referred ‘rural area’ as the smallest area of habitation and ‘sustainable rural development’ as the holistic development of rural areas in Political, Economic, Social, Technical, Legal and Ecological fronts (PESTLE) in order to maximise human well-being without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Some other important domain of sustainable development are also taken into consideration. In view of sustainable development goals adopted by UNDP (2015), this paper has considered entrepreneurship development among women, employment generation through entrepreneurship, income generation and access to financial proposition as important issues for understanding role of entrepreneurship towards promoting sustainable rural development. The role of women in small scale industrial sectors has been identified as owners of enterprises, some were managers of enterprises and some were employees. These roles have been making impressive changes among rural women in their mindset and attitude. Nowadays, women are in the news for being in success of their economic ventures. Some of them are ruling all segments of industry and every spheres of life. This has made a positive impact on building self-confidence and of course aspiration of other women. The micro credit as well as the fund of joint venture is also further supporting the gender diversity amongst entrepreneurs. Woetzel et al.(2015) have pointed out that with equal participation of women in the economy, India’s GDP can rise by 16% at usual level by 2025, which means an addition of $2.9 trillion to the Indian economy.. According to their study Indian economy has been observing transitional motion since the increasing rate of women in entrepreneurship development, management and operation of small scale industries is continued.

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