The Hindu Business Line : `Create a framework that helps entrepreneurs '

When T. N. Srinivasan speaks to you, it almost feels like being back in college. Which is not surprising because he is a teacher, researcher and economist with over four decades of experience. Currently the Samuel J. Park Jr, Professor of Economics at Yale University in the US, he is also associated with the Stanford Centre for International Development at Stanford University as a Senior Research Fellow. International trade, multilateral institutions, economic development and policy reforms in India are some of his areas of research interest. In Kerala recently for a conference on Kerala in the Global Economy, he spoke to The New Manager on employability in India, innovation and entrepreneurship. Edited excerpts from the interview:

You have done some work on employment and employability. Where do you see India in terms of employability of its workforce?

Employability is something, which is somewhat vague. `Employability doing what' is the question. So if you broaden the question and say `is our labour force trained in activities for which there will be future demand for labour'; that's what I want to think about. This would mean if the future demand for labour is going to be in activities which require much more skills, much more education, much more specific training and so on, are we providing them? And there, perhaps, we are not. We are not anticipating future growth in labour demand of specific categories and providing the facilities to train them.

On the government's role in preparing Indians for jobs of the future.

One option is hands-on, the Government deciding `this is where the future is going to be and we are going to prepare for it'. Most governments are not suited for identifying, picking winners and providing all the necessary inputs things for the winner to succeed. As far as I am concerned, that is a pipedream.Better still is to think about competition. Here again, we are a vast country. Use the States as the laboratories. Try out alternative ideas . Let us learn from doing alternative things, rather than sticking to one policy decision.

Does innovation lead to entrepreneurship or is it the other way around, entrepreneurship leading to innovation?

It's a two-way relationship. In one sense, innovation, somebody finds something but that somebody may not be equipped to translate that something into a commercial proposition; that is where the entrepreneurship comes in. The entrepreneur identifies this idea. You may produce the idea, but you may not have the capital or the skills to find out what the market is. But as an entrepreneur, I may find that I can borrow your idea and do it. The other side of the story is what you are saying — if there was no innovation at all, what's the point in entrepreneurs. But the entrepreneur himself could be an innovator; there, the two functions combine.

What should Indian society be doing to encourage entrepreneurship?

India has been an entrepreneurial society. Think of the British period, from the late 19th century on. The Ahmedabad textile industry or the Bombay textile industry came into being only because of private entrepreneurs; Tata built the steel mills and so on. So we had entrepreneurial skill, but we suppressed it for too long a time, the State taking the dominant position in economic activity. And now it is thriving.

As long as the framework in which if you have the entrepreneurial skills there are no roadblocks for pursuing your activities, whether it is credit, infrastructure, whatever.

If the public sector is providing these, it would be the way to go. Entrepreneurs would then take advantage of it.

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