Fundamental Rights related (Equality)
Source: The Economic Times
Context:
The author talks about the significance of Dalit Entrepreneurship.
Editorial Insights:
What’s the matter?
- Indian society is deeply entrenched in caste & its serpentine matrix, despite the constitutional guarantee of equality.
- Though Dalit’s have achieved a degree of mobility through seven decades of affirmative policies, actions & social movements, Dalits have not been able to fill the void of social & cultural capital.
- In this context, emphasis on Dalit entrepreneurship becomes vital for achieving equality in current situations.
Significance of Dalit Entrepreneurship:
- Today now focus on Dalit rights & empowerment has been shifted from traditional parameters to expanding market forces to address social exclusion.
- Dalit entrepreneurship is the new narrative changing the Dalit empowerment discourse.
- Because entrepreneurship shapes access to rights & push against entrenched social hierarchies.
- At the same time, with entrepreneurship comes the circulation of material benefits & relative autonomy.
- Today the new Dalit generation rather than bogged down to old socio-political order, now looking for opportunities to overcome exploitative social order & to become an active shareholder in New India.
Barriers/Challenges for Dalit Entrepreneurship:
- While the dominant caste control over business & commerce along with their entrepreneurial instincts have created a network of markets & opportunities,
- But for the marginalized sections, the options left available are taking up a govt job or carrying forward their caste-based occupation.
- While dominant castes along with accessing capital for their entrepreneurial ventures, also accumulate social capital.
- As per MSME ministry reports, Dalit-owned ventures are minimal in terms of numbers as well as revenues.
- The country-wide data showcases that Dalits are still indentured to their traditional caste-assigned occupations that are manual & low-paying.
- At the same time, Potential Dalit entrepreneurs are hindered by the fear of social discord & losing potential sub-caste network aided mutual insurance.
Govt Efforts in this regard:
The Establishment of District Industries Centre (DIC) stipulates to nurture entrepreneurs & has sought to get financial institutions to amend their rules for collateral to ease financing projects for Dalit entrepreneurs.
Similarly, State Financial Corporations have also been instructed to increase financial support to SC entrepreneurs.
For instance, the Andhra Pradesh Infra Corporation has allocated land for SC entrepreneurs, while SIDBI offers an additional subsidy on them.
The Stand Up India Initiative is the focused financial intervention for SC/ST entrepreneurs that guarantees credit up to Rs 1 crore.
Issues with Govt efforts:
- Many schemes like Stand Up India has failed to deliver the expected results due to the unavailability of eligible SC/ST entrepreneurship
- At the same time, most of the funds lying unutilized because of the apathy of loaning branches & officials towards proposed by Dalit entrepreneurs.
- Also, the sanctioned amount & actual disbursement seems to be a significant impediment.
- The most important issue is that the actual benefit could never reach the beneficiaries due to artificial inaccessibility created by inherent social & caste biases.
Way-Ahead:
- To overcome the hindrance of fear, Dalit entrepreneurs need to take recourse to their internal ties & use them to sustain their economic gains.
- The dynamic of support reachability to Dalit entrepreneurs is unknown; therefore the schemes & programmes must be closely monitored to ensure that the subsidies are accessible.
- There is a need for Dalit-focused alternate investment finance (AIF) & private equity (PE) funds to create a vibrant & inclusive MSME ecosystem.
- At the same time, an inclusivity cell be created in banks & lending institutions/NBFCs to inform, educate & foster Dalit entrepreneurship.
- It is advisable to formulate multiple credit guarantee trusts by raising contributions from various market forces to provide guaranteed support to the banks for them to extend credit.
- At last, a Social Vulnerability Index also needs to be introduced, addressed & assessed.
Concluding Remarks:
It is need of the hour for govt to ramp up institutional aid to Dalit entrepreneurs because supporting them is integral to the nations’ inclusive development. Today’s Dalit entrepreneurship holds the promise of an exciting & uncharted future for social transformation.
