Nation Marching from Enterprise to Self-reliance

• Based on positive efforts being made with the world's largest young population, labour force, and abundant resources, we can say that India is poised to become the world's skill capital.
• Today nation is taking rapid strides towards self-reliance, with start-ups, entrepreneurship, and skill development playing a crucial role.
• The Economic Survey 2018-19 also points out that India's demographic dividend will be at its peak around the year 2041 when the share of working people in the age group of 20 to 59 is expected to reach 59 percent of the total population. If the demographic dividend favours a country, then the country's economy gets a boost, the growth rate picks up, and per capita income also increases.
• The government has set up the National Skill Development Corporation to provide skill-related training to 500 million individuals by 2022.If skilled youth are available in the country, there will be no shortage of human labour resources for industries, and they will boostproductivity. Pradhan MantriKaushalVikasYojana (PMKVY) has proved to be a milestone in this direction. Youth are provided with short-term training in industry-relevant skills.
• To promote start-ups, the government, in 2019, has changed its definition. According to it, now a start-up will be treated as a start-up for ten years after its establishment and continue to get benefits. The government has created a 'Fund of Funds for Start-ups' with a corpus of Rs. 10,000-crore in SIDBI.
• Aatma-Nirbhar Skilled Employee-Employer Mapping (ASEEM) portal under the 'Self-reliant India Campaign' (AatmaNirbhar Bharat Abhiyan), free digital learning platform (Skills Build Reignite), PradhanMantriYuvaUdyamitaVikasAbhiyan (PMYUA) to promote young entrepreneurs. These schemes will certainly play an important role to make India self-reliant.
• The government has also taken several measures to encourage women entrepreneurs to begin start-ups. Together with GIZ, a German institution, the government has launched a pilot project for the economic empowerment of women entrepreneurs and women start-ups.
• Under 'AatmaNirbhar Bharat Abhiyan,' the Prime Minister has made the provision of an agricultural infrastructure fund with a corpus of Rs. 1 lakh crore, which aims to transform the condition and direction of this field. Infrastructure facilities such as warehouses, cold storages, and food processing units will be set up in rural areas with this fund.
• Due to self-reliance in agricultural production and improved agriculture in India, new opportunities are also being created in the food processing industry to formalizemicro food enterprises supported with the global reach and commitment to the resolution of 'Vocal for Local’; Operation Greens to help in cold storage transportation and processing of vegetables like potato, onion, and tomato.
• Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme (SVEP) under (DAY-NRLM). It can be called an effective effort to empower women entrepreneurs in villages and develop entrepreneurship spirit. Scheme has also yielded social inclusion, increased women participation; under this program, 75 percent of the enterprises are owned and managed by women.
• Entrepreneurship, skill and start-up are at the core of the resolve of 'self-reliance' under the 'AatmaNirbhar Bharat Abhiyan' Become self-reliant as a skilled entrepreneur, provide employment to others and contribute more and more to open avenues of opportunities for the nation's prosperity with your skills and entrepreneurship.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Growth

• The imperative in India is to ensure that an estimated 150 million youth of India entering the workforce over the next few years can realise their true potential through access to a world class innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem, leveraging rapidly advancing, accessible, affordable technologies transforming the world we live in and enabling an incredible set of opportunities for innovation and new job creation.

Indian Entrepreneurs and Start-ups at forefront during COVID-19 crisis

• The COVID-19 crisis has left countries gasping for immediate solutions even as the world's finest scientist’s healthcare and biotech researchers fervently race towards finding a curative solution or vaccine to bring this crisis to an end.
• The challenges in India are many. These include controlling the spread of COVID-19 in its cities with their share of very dense areas of population, its vast network of villages with lack of adequate hospitals, healthcare equipment or doctors, and a highly migrant workforce who are daily-wage earners.
• Challenging times and a crisis of this nature need great government support. It also demands great synergies between academia, government and industry.

Atal lnnovation Mission: Powering AatmaNirbhar Bharat through Innovation and Entrepreneurship

• Creating a nation of job-creators and not just job-seekers is the key. And central to this, is the need for an extensive collaboration between corporate industry, academia, and governments at the village, district, state and central levels.

Examining the five pillars through the lens of innovation and entrepreneurship:

• Pillar of demographic dividend - enabling the channelisation of this youthful energy towards nation-building activities by focusing on developing vocational, technical and managerial skills, while fostering a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship at the school, university and industry levels.
• Pillar of infrastructure - India has over 715 districts, more than 4000 cities and 6,00,000 villages. Undisputedly, innovation and entrepreneurship will be key to ensuring the development of both physical as well as digital infrastructure. Ex- Smart Villages, Digital Highways, etc.
• Pillar of Demand - An ideal situation for thousands of start-ups and companies to capitalise on and fulfill pent-up demand for new solutions and consumer- or citizen-centric services in every vertical-agriculture, healthcare, education, water management, clean and renewable energy, affordable housing, defence, space, transportation, or retail.
• Pillar of technology-stupendous potential are affordable, accessible, advanced IR 4.0 technologies, including 3D printing, lOT, AR/VR, biotech, cognitive computing, AI/Blockchain,
• Pillar of socio-economic growth-With 22 percent of its population still below the poverty line, 44 percent of its economy still agri based, many districts still combating unacceptable percentages of infant mortality and maternal mortality, and only a mere 13 percent of women entrepreneurs, India needs to ensure that rapid economic progress encompasses societal progress.
• Atal lnnovation Mission (AIM) - to promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in the country:
  • Atal Tinkering Labs - At School Level
  • Atal Incubators - At Universities, Institutions, Industry level
  • Atal Community Innovation Centers - Serving Unserved and Under-Served regions of India
  • Atal New India Challenges - Product and Service Innovations with National Impact
  • Applied Research and Innovation for Small Enterprises (ARISE)-to stimulate MSME industry innovation
  • Mentor of Change (Mentorship and Partnerships-with Public, Private sector, NGOs, Academia, Institutions)
• To enable all the initiatives to succeed, AIM has launched one of the largest mentor engagement and management program "Mentor India - The mentors of Change".
• Promoting Entrepreneurship and Start-ups for Sustainable Growth truly will help India to ignite the innovative entrepreneurial spirit of New India by focusing on strengthening the above pillars, which will ensure an unprecedented wave of long deserved growth prosperity and well-being that can serve the interests of the rest of the world as well.