PRASANTAM: ENTREPRENEURIAL EDUCATION (EE)

In our intra-community meetings, two of us perhaps stand out for our bending of any issue in a predictable direction. One, my good confrere Varghese (a very creative and articulate mind, who has survived a terrible attack of Guillain-Barret syndrome - GBS, and bounced back to life - fully), who has an entrepreneurial tweak to almost anything discussed (earlier it had more to do with his pet project - Pallikutam, the monthly magazine on education, as the one stop solution for almost all the ails of the world), but with indeed some powerful argument, and awareness regarding the trends, and his own take on what entrepreneurship (or ism?) is all about. Two, my own self (I presume so), having an environmental/sustainability angle to almost all issues.

Besides authoring a highly creative work 'entrepreneurial intellection' (wow!!), he has, with a kind of propagandist zeal, managed to convince himself, and make a few others, sense, that there is indeed a Chavara legacy of entrepreneurial ethos or even, spirituality! Though grudgingly, I give in, till counter proof is produced.

Entrepreneurship angle was not alien to me - it started off from the good old days as a student of Social Work, and I continued harping it all through my educational career, but not really knowing how to promote it or cultivate it, except talking about it to the students. I have often found that trained social workers were found to be best employees, willing to take up any task, stretch beyond the time schedules, do things more systematically, document and communicate better than a typical office worker having a graduate degree. The training of repeated reporting and personal and group (at times, rigorous & critical) interviews, and regular presentations help them to be. But when it comes to being an initiator, they lag behind. They are found better equipped to sustain what has been initiated by pioneers like Rippen Kapoor (an Airline employee turned a sociopreneur who initiated CRY), or Vandana Shiva, the atomic scientist turned entrepreneur behind BIJ, New Delhi or several such ventures.

So when one of my young students Prashant, and his wife Seema stepped into almost initiating a full-fledged organisation in Orissa, I was thrilled to see a streak of entrepreneurship flourishing. He did manage to do good to communities and a region, but also managed to support himself decently, I believe. Yes, such ventures now a days fall into the category of sociopreneurship. But do they, really? What could justify the suffix of 'preneur' to a prefix to create new portmanteus like sociopreneur etc?

I think, beyond the initiative and innovation angle, the leadership and risk-taking involved, the suffix is justified when it is able to generate wealth and sustain itself.

Attending the on-line webinar of CATALYST to promote innovation and entrepreneurship, I was eager to see the kind of initiatives being taken as start ups - solutions for problems that are also wealth generating and with some initial support, self-sustaining. I hear that organisations like Ashoka foundation, Catalyst etc. try to promote this spirit. Youth are invited to present their ideas on addressing issues through projects that could sustain. Ashoka website reports that within ten years of its entry into the field, it could achieve its goals of establishing social entrepreneurship as a viable approach to addressing social issues.

My invovlement in a project with a small time funding for India to address the issue of poverty generated 15 responses of which there was hardly anyone which had a fresh approach towards the issue. But having had the funds available for experimenting, we decided to allocate them to the proposals that seemed genuined and that would sustain. One among them stood a little apart in that it was meant to promote farming with women getting involved, and employing organic methods. They proposed they would try this out for a year, and if found successful, would scale that up.

I recall our smart management student Suraj, who would have really faired well in academics, choosing an unexpected track after a stint with some managerial positions, chose to walk the less travelled road, by initiating a venture named planatearth (also plan@earth) with focus on waste management - collection, segregation, recycling and upcycling - with women as partners or staff. It is described as non-profit. But I am sure that at least 50 people earn an honest living from that.

I am glad that, as a young school, we are inaugurating an entrepreneurship club - to what extent it

would do justice to that name, I am not sure. However, the inauguration of the club was befitting - with young American-educated, green, engineer-turned, Qatari entrepreneur Ghanim Al-Sulaiti, arriving in style and presenting his short trip up the summit he is right now - of a green entrepreneur walking (in this case, riding a Tesla) the talk - proving that waste management is not only a virtue but a sellable entrepreneurship, with his office managed as zero waste, employees (some 250 plus) mandated to use public transport with provision of free metro cards to each, and even water bottle being envisioned and produced as biodegradable. His ventures include Evergreen Organics, a vegan restaurant at Hamad International Airport, Green & Go - a healthy fast food joint, Mylk - a vegan susbtitute for dairy products, Paper-cut - a sustainable paper based packaging venture... He has agreed to provide the school with such water bottles, subsidising it for propagating the idea. Here is a modern day youthful spiritual person, not because he chosen a vegan life for himself - but for the set of 21st century virtues he exudes.

As a believer, I feel 21st century virtues for youth should be in this range:

1. I shall not seek any job from someone.

2. I shall create a job for myself

3. I shall generate job for another ten.

4. I shall not generate waste

5. If I generate waste, I shall manage it without harming the planet.

6. I shall manage it and generate wealth out of waste (WoW)

I hope such virtues will be engendered through 21st century education, and there will be an array of innovators with the suffix 'preneur' - edupreneur, agripreneur, coopreneur, silvapreneur, aquapreneur ...

I am inspired always by the statement of the protagonist of Shaw's science fiction 'Back to Methuselah', when he says: There are those that look at things as they are, and askwhy. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not!

As an educator, I feel good if we can enable the learner to look around, see the things as they are, and ask why. For often, the learner, sick with ennui, is not even bothered about what, who, where and when, let alone the hows and whys. However, I feel today's education will lead to making the world a better place and life really worth living, when it can lead people to imagine things that never were - like peace, and dare to ask 'why not'.

P.S. As I made these notes, I thought I would turn entrepreneurial by creating a holiday for entrepreneurship - and lo and behold, that is already there. August 21st is dedicated as World Entrepreneurs' Day.