The Unstoppable Indians?

India Resource Center

I am very passionate about Entrepreneurship and teaching the course too. It was a strange experience in my life that I realised theory and practice are different after I had a very close shave with a colleague-friend-turned first generation Entrepreneur in Hyderabad. Every businessman can not be an Entrepreneur and vice versa. This is my finding. There are Social Entrepreneurs who do not look at making money as first priority. They have other mottos of helping and working for others through enterprise and innovation.

I was teaching initially a course titled "Entrepreneurial Finance" at TAPMI for a few years in a Program - PGDEM. Later, between 2006 and 2009, while teaching at Alliance Business School in Bangalore, I taught for three years a course on Entrepreneurship & New Venture Creation. During the course, more than dealing with fundas of entrepreneurism, I used to make my students to study (not read) the profiles of several successful entrepreneurs in India and abroad. They used to present in the Class Room and I used to relate to the concepts. In the process, I came across a few more terminology like Edu-preneurs, Tech-preneurs, NRI Entrepreneurs and Social Entrepreneurs.

Speaking about Edu-preneurs, we have simple and straight examples like Dr TMA Pai of Manipal, Matha Amrithananda Mayi of Amity and Sathya Sai Baba of Sai University in Puttaparthi. At least the first one was a Medical Doctor but went on to start a cooperative society, a bank which was later nationalised (Syndicate Bank), a Degree College (MGM) followed by Medical, Dental, Pharmacy, Allied Sciences, Engineering, Architecture, Communication, etc. This is now Manipal University - India's first private university catering to students from not only all India but over fifty countries beginning with Malaysia, Srilanka, USA, UK, Gulf and so on.

Amrithanandamayi is a fisher-woman, studied up to third standard and belongs to Kerala. She is a Saint and works for world population. She set up a University with Medical, Engineering and Management faculties in TN-Kerala border near Coimbatore. Similarly, Sathya Sai Baba is not even a Tenth Pass but the range of social activities he undertakes including Education is unbelievable.

And in the website of http://www.ibef.org/ I took a page uploaded by NDTV Profit narrating powerful stories of ten individuals who are rendering yeomen services. There are titled as THE UNSTOPPABLE INDIANS. Worth viewing and reading too. That is Social Entrepreneurship.

The Unstoppable Indians?

I am not referring to Lalu, Mayawati, Modi (Narendra or Lalit), Jayalalithaa, Mamata, Rahul, Shashi Tharoor or Jayaram Ramesh and Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni or Sania Mirza. Neither I am interested in Shah Rukh Khans, Salman Khans, Katy Mirza or Katrina or Shilpa Shetty, Rakhi Sawant, Priyanka Chopra or Preety Zinta, et al.  All these are Public Servants, Politicians, Film Stars and Sports Persons but making tons of money.  There are this IFS-B Officials like Madhuri Gupta, Ketan Mehta, MCI Chair-person, corrupt bureaucrats and even Defence Personnel in senior positions.  Who is paying them? The gullible, innocent, honest, simple, sincere Tax Payer - the AAm AAdmi.  Either these celebrities get elected or selected initially on the strength of their merit, sincerity, honesty, hard work, intelligence and so on but later turned out to be Heros. There are some fly-by-night operators. Each one of them claim unique achievements which are some times questionable by experts, lawers, etc. They earn name, fame, money, power, positions but never share the success with others.

I am excited about those who toil and serve.  Please see the link here: The Unstoppable Indians.  The TV Channels like NDTV, CNN-IBN, etc are carrying out yeomen service in covering stories of such unsung, unheard, unwept and unknown heroes and heroines.  I wrote about the Social Entrepreneurs in one of my earlier blogs two months back.  They are the ones who care for the society, create new ventures, afford employment avenues and help their unfortunate brethern to eke out some living.  We heard of Mohd Yunus of Bangladesh who created Grameen Bank and won Nobel Prize in 2005-6 for Peace.  In India, we have several Yunuses (!) in SEWA, SKS finance, Basix, Lijjat Papad, Bhagavatula Charitable Trust, AMUL, etc. 

"The Week" of Malayala Manorama Group (Kerala) scouts for and identifies every year a unique person in the service of humanity and declares him or her as Man of the Year. It is going on for over twenty five years. The list of unstoppables by NDTV is very special with names like The Umang Mahila Movement, The Barefoot College, Dalit Businessman, Gulabi Gang, Khabar Laharia, etc.  It is time that Government of India should acknowledge and recognise / reward all such self-less unstoppable Indians instead of encouraging controversial politicians, businessmen, scientists, sportsmen, cinema stars and others who influence and get awarded with Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan, Padma Vibhushan and others.