Programme for Entrepreneurship Development: Some Reflections

Abstract

The word "Entrepreneurship" has attracted much public attention these days both in India and abroad. And, the person in focus, the entrepreneur, is regarded as the most crucial factor in economic development. Like the other developing countries, in our country too, there are ample opportunities for innovations to exploit the available resources and initiate entrepreneurial ventures. Realising the need and importance for developing small scale entrepreneurs, various state governmental consultancy organisations (TCOs), non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and several engineering colleges have started offering entrepreneurship courses to encourage and develop entrepreneurs. The purpose of these courses on entrepreneurship is to prepare the learners for taking entrepreneurial ventures. Entrepreneurship education in India, or for that matter anywhere else, is of recent origin. In fact, few until very recently believed that entrepreneurs could be created through educational endeavours, or entrepreneurship could be a matter of training. For well-over a century or longer, entrepreneurship was confined to the economic literature as a mere concept to explain the process of production, without much practical value to those concerned with the mundane task of enterprise development. Educational intervention in entrepreneurship was given less importance due to its emphasis on market mechanism which was being considered the principal driving force behind economic changes.