Fostering entrepreneurial skills in students for developed India

Dr Mukul Chandra Bora

(The writer is Director, Dibrugarh University Institute of Engineering & Technology. He can be reached at drmukulcbora@gmail.com)

The New Education Policy of 1986 has emphasized Vocationalization of Engineering and Technical Education of this country and to build up an ecosystem of Entrepreneurial skills amongst the students of Technical Institutes throughout the country. But these efforts remained as it is and were unable to deliver the goal set by the earlier Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India as the effects were not seen in the actual field due to wholehearted efforts of the Institutes and the Government and were do not undertaken in a mission mode. The Department of Science & Technology has set up the National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB) in the year 1982 and this organization has been trying to set up institutional mechanisms which could act as a support system for creating technocrat entrepreneurs in the country. One of the important initiatives taken up by NSTEDB in the year 1986-87 was the establishment of Entrepreneurship Development Cells (EDCs) in academic institutions and so many such cells were established in different institutes in the country. The time has come to look afresh at the concept of EDCs to meet the challenges posed by the current era of economic liberalization, globalization and population dividend of the country. The National Educational Policy 2020 will definitely boost up to impart the entrepreneurial skills to the students of the Technical Institutions of the country to grow the GDP contribution in the manufacturing sector and is well embedded in this policy. Another initiative of the NEP 1986 was to set up of Industry Institute Partnership Cell (IIPC) to reduce the gap between the knowledge required by the employer and imparted by technical institutes of the country. So this is high time when we have to convert our mindset from traders to manufacturers inculcating the skills of entrepreneurship to see us as a developed nation. The following are the issues which can create technocrat entrepreneur in our society and will make our manufactures from traders:

Need for Entrepreneurial Skills in India: With the implementation of NEP 1986 the Government of India has taken a lot of initiatives to create technocrat entrepreneurs through the teaching and establishment of EDC and IIPC in almost all the Technical Institutes of the country. It is worth mentioning that a huge amount of public money has been invested to train the students in the area of entrepreneurship development but all the public money were gone in vain due to the superficial involvement of the institutes across the country. The focus was concentrated on the issue of Entrepreneurship Development training and opening of EDC in each and every technical Institute of the country which did not attract wholehearted involvement of the teachers, students and the government machinery and was just undertaken as a norm for approval processes and accreditations. It is true that both the educational institutes and government have either forgotten the huge population burden of this country or done it deliberately to create a nation with a lot of unemployed youth so that the political class of the population can come to power in the name of employment of educated youth. The policy of the Government has also fuelled our country to become a trading country rather than a nation with a large number of export-oriented manufacturing units for employment and self-employment of our educated youth. A large number of youths (65%) as our population and hence without making it a hub of global manufacturing it is just impossible to employ our educated youth in real sense and the youths should inculcate with the spirit of entrepreneurial skills so that they can become a job giver rather than job seekers. The technical students should be given the task of product development in their final year of studies to build confidence in the product that they will be able to manufacture after going out of the institute and can become a manufacturer for the country. This issue is now taken care of in the National Education Policy 2020 with the inclusion of research components in their final year as a core component and I am sure that this will lead to the creation of Entrepreneurship ability and the students will be able to finalise their business plan at the last year of their studies and the roadmap will be clear in front of them for future endeavour. The inclusion of Rural Internship by AICTE in the core curriculum of Engineering & Technology courses will also boost up the students for idea generation on the problems and issues of rural economy as our country's economy greatly depends on the issue of rural development. The brief outlines of India's Rural economy are also discussed here for a better understanding of the issue of the development of the rural economy for developed India.

Although India is an agricultural country, still there are many other areas where we can develop with support from the government and different sectors of the society at large. The agro-based MSME and value-added agricultural products are the need of the hour and more focus should be given on the creation of agro waste-based industries and is having huge potential in the Indian market. It is a time when all of us has to think and shift our focus from a city-based economy to village-based sustainable development which will not only reduce the population load of the cities but also help us to fight at the time of natural disasters like flood, earthquake and also pandemic like COVID-19. So instead of making a few smart cities, we have to put more thrust on the issue of smart villages so that there can be a uniform distribution of economic and other basic resources. If all the basic infrastructures available in the cities are made available to the villages then we will be able to see our real India and we will be able to go to the peak of development. As we the people of India have got different cultures and resources so the system of adoption of the western economic and educational model has made us poorer and if we still do not understand the real potential or growth engine of the country then the copy-and-paste system of E & E i.e., Education and Economy will finish us and the majority of our population will go to the below the poverty line as they both copied E&E are not real but superficial in nature. The situation becomes more worsen when the people from rural areas migrate to the nearby cities in search of employment or self-employment leaving behind their real gold in villages and if this trend can be prevented then the potential migrants can contribute to the small and medium-sized businesses in their own regions which will benefit both the rural economy as well as the individual. There are so many issues on the rural economy but this will not be discussed as the rural economy itself is a library, not a book. In short, it can be concluded that "it is just like adopting a test tube baby by a capable couple or adopting to biotechnologically modified seed leaving aside our own high yielding variety of crops and many more examples which do not have any link with our soil and culture. So this is the time of pandemic when it has to unlock our locked mind and brain to think differently so that we can also survive as healthy and wealthy human beings of this wonderful nature.

Reduction of the gap between industry and academia: The Industry Institute Partnership Cell (IIPC) is also one of the mandates of New Education Policy 1986 IIPC was formed under the aegis of the AICTE, in 2011, to provide a platform for interaction between the industry and knowledge imparting engineering institutes of the country to mitigate the gap between the academic curriculum and the industry requirements. The main aim of IIPC was to disseminate and utilize the high-quality knowledge and research of the faculties to improve the quality of its product or service to make it competent for global competition by Indian manufacturers. It is quite embarrassing to state that this mandate also remains as it is like EDC and not many deliverables are seen in terms of Research and Development (R & D) input to the industries and the real situation is quite different as most of the Industrial R & D goes to institutions/universities abroad leaving aside our own academic Institutes. It may be due to the reason of confidence and trust in the capabilities of our technical institutions. It may be mentioned here that most of our research work is related to academic interest and most of the research outcomes are not at all useful for industries. The matter becomes clearer when we see the research output in terms of patents and till today most of the manufacturing industries in our country are running with technology from abroad including the production process. The issue of good academic research has made us slaves in terms of patent and product development and is the result of our inclination towards praise by others. It is true that the academic community of the western world has praised the Indian scientists for good academic research but what is the benefit of this type of research if we have to depend on the products and technologies developed by others. So this NEP 2020 has brought this issue too as academic research cannot make our country the global manufacturing hub of the world which in turn increase the GDP of this country. It is worth mentioning that the total number of patents by US universities till 2012 is around 80,000 and by the Indian universities and R & D Institutes together is not 10% of this number and even those Indian patents are mostly non- implementable due to their cost-effectiveness in product and process in production. So, this is the reason why Indian manufacturing companies are investing abroad for R & D in product development and this is the time when our academic Institutions have to orient the research towards product and process development. So if we failed to mitigate this gap then the dream of Dr APJ Abdul Kalam will remain as a dream and we will be nowhere in the development map of the world and the opportunity given in this recently adopted education policy and try to make us accountable for this miserable situation to build up the confidence with the Industries.

Product/Process Development for Rural Economy: The introduction of Social Internship by AICTE in the Engineering curriculum is the result of well thoughts process of different experts from a different diverse field of social to applied sciences and is of great importance to a country like India whose major GDP contribution should come from the rural economy. The technical students of our country should understand the real economy of this country and the difficulties faced by the villagers in their small scale industries to make their product competitive in terms of cost and quality in this competitive world. The engineering students after getting the problem statement should concentrate on the design and development of product and manufacturing process and a section of students of rural background will definitely be the future technocrat entrepreneur of this country and may become the job creators for the others. Unless and until rural entrepreneurship is not taking place the dream for developed India will remain a dream as the Indian economy stood on the mass people participation of our real Bharat which is nothing but the village agro-based economy. In short, it can be stated that "Entrepreneurship is critical for sustainable development of our country as it acts as a support system for economic and social growth. It helps to create a society of inclusive growth and the entrepreneurs are inventors who drive solutions, including the issue of climate change. While talent is everywhere, the opportunity is not. The political will has been shown at the top leadership, and needs a very persistent effort to build systems which can ensure sustained support to rural entrepreneurship."

Cutting-edge technology and process development: It is well known that innovation and technological development is a never-ending process and it needs continuous and constant effort from the technology developers in India. So the development of new cutting edge technology should be the focus of all the technocrats including those who are in academics and this is the only way to bring our past glory of science, technology and innovation. It is to be remembered here, that the iron and steel melting industry of our undivided Assam is more than 2000 years old but due to some reasons we have miserably failed to keep our traditions of innovation in the area of metallurgy and many more areas where Indians were expert like shipbuilding, chemistry, building construction etc., and we have to dig out our past innovation to accommodate modern-day science and technology. We are not only becoming traders in terms of selling goods but also in the areas of importing technology and process of manufacturing from different parts of the world. Can we imagine a developed India where the first materials are also manufactured with the help of technical know-how from a different country? Can we imagine a society where a toy required for a child is also imported from other countries? Can we think of a society where what we have to eat will be determined by the food chain group of industries? So, this is the time when the Government is trying hard to make our self-reliance in terms of products and technology development and is only possible with the wholehearted participation from the common people of this country. So, society and the technocrat should come together to make our country sustainable in terms of need-based technological development without asking for praise from other countries. It is true that we have cultivated such a mentality wherein we feel proud of using products manufactured by other countries rather than try to manufacture such products locally in terms of price and quality competitiveness and this type of our thinking should be mitigated soon for a better India for our future generation. All will happen only through innovation in terms of products and processes required for manufacturing.

Industries for more R&D funding in academia: The Indian industries should come forward for their product development instead of importing technology from outside the country and at the same time our R & D intuitions should also build confidence in the Industries. There are examples in India where the industrial problems assigned to academic intuitions were not completed in time and due to which the industries went for technology transfer rather than technology development. The most commonly used computer processor Intel is the patent of Mellon Carnage University and there are many more examples of this type of innovation by the US universities. So, we have to shift our academic institutions from mere teaching to technology innovation centres for a developed India. The policies were and are there but the great need is the spirit to do something for a developed India and without which we will just leave a country with begging hands for technology. So, instead of industry-institute interaction, we should form a family with either one as father and mother for technological development.

Establishment of the waste-based industry: The linear economic model and extensive use of natural resources for development has brought us to this level of an unsustainable world and some of the ill effects are visible now in terms of natural disasters. The linear economic model is the only cause of the huge production of waste and if we failed to mitigate this then the time is not far when the whole world will be full of waste only. As such it can be concluded that there is no waste in this world but there is some waste that is produced due to the process of chemical transformation. Technological adventurism has brought a lot of changes to this nature in terms of chemical and biological modifications and hence global warming and climate change. The Sustainable Development Goal of the United Nations has requested all the countries to adopt the circular model of economy or Zero Waste Economy. It is worth mentioning that if the global temperature goes on rising due to our torture the nature then millions of population living in the small islands will going to die due to the submergence of the whole island and then the rest of the countries will be killer of those innocent people. The circular economic model will give rise to a waste-based economy and millions of youths may become entrepreneurs and job creators of our country. But this type of economic model is only possible when the students will have confidence in the product development from the waste and the technical Institutions should put more focus on product development from waste through the final year research project. This type of academic exercise will build confidence as the students will have hands-on experience on the product which he/they will be going to manufacture in future as an entrepreneur. The National Education Policy has provided ample scope for those students with zeal to go for manufacturing units from waste.

Agro-based industries and value-added product development: India is basically an agricultural country and we have tried a lot of permutations and combinations to become a manufacturing country and as a result of this we become an importer and trader. Any country whose major economy is only trading cannot become developed and is just an artificial economy. The real economy will lie with the real talent which is only agriculture and this area is of great focus now. This area is just neglected by all the population as we have failed to give due respect to those food grain producers and we have gone to the level of importing food grains. But if those agriculturalists are given due respect with value addition to their products then they will be able to go back to their original profession which in turn the country will grow on the real economy. The major growth engine of the country should be in place and cultivators should be given the opportunity to become manufacturers of value-added agricultural products. This is a challenging job but not impossible and can be done as a cluster of industries and one example of such industries may be the making of particle board from agricultural waste. Everybody wants to be an industrialist but none to be cultivators and if they have been given the scope to become industry owners then there will be a great revolution in the agricultural sector I can foresee in our country. I am sure that the academic community will come forward to help the cultivators to become agro-waste based industrialists for developed India.

In short, it can be stated that although there is a huge potential for technocrat entrepreneurs due to the lack of product-based research projects in the institute they were failed to build the confidence for job creators. It is high time for our academic community to concentrate on product and process development instead of academic research which has got hardly any relevance in the real-time world. So in my opinion, at least 30% of the final year project should concentrate on product development to build confidence for product making MSME and the Government of India is taking a lot of steps for funding this type of Entrepreneur in India. So the technical institutions should shift the focus from academic to applied research of process and product development which in turn foster the entrepreneurship skills of the students.