Rural Business Incubation Center

Rabindra nath Nayak

Background:

• Business acumen is not, of course, limited to traditional business communities alone. There are entrepreneurial successes we could see in all communities and castes. Leadership and management skills are there in all people. But when it comes to opportunities for availing a mentor to nurture and develop those skills, luck always goes to the upper castes and upper classes.

• Today, there are more than 100 business incubators in India. • Most of them are situated in premier educational institutes

in urban India, where not much rural students or members of Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes find a place.

• Create 95 per cent or more of total jobs in the non-farm sector. They are being set up by its owners in an attempt to alleviate poverty condition. These enterprises could be termed as poverty alleviating enterprises (PAEs).

• Only 11 per cent of the total 1.4 million registered MSMEs are owned by entrepreneurs belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. (3rd SSI Census, 2001-02).

• MSMEs are an effective tool in the fight against poverty. There are millions of informal sector enterprises that can grow as formal businesses and as legal entities in India.

• More registered enterprises and businesses running as legal entities would do good to the government. It would enhance the total tax revenue of the government as well.

• A solution for this may be creating an institutional mechanism at block/panchayat level.

• Setting up of Enterprise Resource Centre cum Rural Business Incubators (ERC& BIs) could be a possible solution.

• The institutional mechanism, ERC & BIs, can help informal sector units migrate to formal businesses.

• One such ERC & BI in each of the community development blocks, 6000 of them in India, with start-up incubation facilities and with information cells and mentoring support to help informal enterprises in getting registered, attaining loans, technology etc may be a good solution. Each block panchayat in India has a population ranging between 1.5 lakh and 3 lakh, roughly with thousands of enterprises and potential for new ventures.

Main Objective:• Business incubators (BIs) can play a crucial role in

sustainable enterprise development. • Entrepreneurs are needed to provide leadership to various

economic activities leading to job creation and economic development.

• The need for entrepreneurs who are capable of taking up the task of identifying potential untapped areas of employment, resources, possible technological applications, new markets are the need of the hour, especially when an economy is moving slowly.

• This would be the wise investment for the State, rather than diverting taxpayers' money for bailing out failed ventures.

• A business incubator offers a number of shared services to start-up companies such as internet-telephone-fax-telex; common reception; networking programs; technology transfer programs; help in identifying markets, technology, finances; marketing assistance; mentoring support; help in fulfilling regulatory requirements and helping the new firm registered.

• By setting up a business incubator, one each in every block, thousands of new enterprises can be launched in the formal sector. New jobs will be created as formal entities. This will also means economic empowerment of poorer sections, Scheduled Castes, Tribes and others and would lead to rural self-sufficiency as Gandhiji dreamed. Developing private sector is the apt solution to fight poverty and unemployment.

REFERENCE

• http://www.heraldofindia.com/article.php?id=516