different kinds of models of knowledge, product and services network.
Unless we buy things produced by the local people, there is no way money
from our pocket can go to the pockets of local people. Invariably, we may
also promote conservation of biodiversity by generating demand for diverse
products.
IV. Agro-processing through returned industrial workers:
Large number of agricultural commodities are exported or sold
unprocessed. The result is that value is added either outside the country or
very far away from the place of origin. Obviously much of the wealth on
account of value addition, does not get shared by the primary producers.
For instance, in psyllium, almost a monopoly crop of India, out of a few
hundred patents in US, only four are by Indians. It is not surprising that
India exports primarily the raw material. How can growers of this crop then
ever aspire to get better returns? Can millions of technically trained workers
returning to rural areas be mobilised for transforming agricultural sector?
V. National Innovation Foundation (NIF) has built a huge database of
grassroots innovations and traditional knowledge practices. A very small
proportion of these have been converted into economic or social
enterprises yet. Students of management, entrepreneurship and various
other disciplines can join hands with innovators and develop business
plans to set up enterprises. NIF also has a Micro Venture Innovation Fund
set up with the help of SIDBI through which such enterprises can be
supported for several years.
VI. Societal needs cannot be met only by mediations in the market
place. Meeting a lot of needs require social enterprises in which the
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consumer of product or services may not bear full, partial or any cost of the
same. Such social enterprises are essential to make the development
process more inclusive and compassionate.
PART II. Educational Implications of Entrepreneurial Imperative
Only a few illustrative approaches for promoting entrepreneurship
have been mentioned in Part I. Many more ideas are given in an
accompanying paper for revival of small scale industries (sristi.org/anilg).
What kind of pedagogy at school as well as higher education level will
promote entrepreneurial approach among young people is the question
that remains to be properly answered. Just as one cannot learn cycling by
practising it on blackboard or computer screen, one cannot learn
entrepreneurship without trying things out. NITIE has done a very
interesting experiment in this regard where every student of entrepreneurial
courses has to set up an enterprise and make money. We need many more
initiatives of such kind. May be similar earnestness has to be shown for
social enterprises as well.
Educational processes can counteract the entrepreneurial spirit by
reinforcing conformity, compliance and congruence. Let me share some
thoughts on making educational environment more entrepreneurial at
school as well as college level.
1. Forging an entrepreneurial attitude:
Any student, scholar or professional or for that matter even an
untrained worker can have an entrepreneurial attitude. Primarily when a
person is willing to take risk, stick one’s neck out, pursue an uncharted path
and experiment a new way of solving problem, one starts showing an
entrepreneurial attitude. One can have such an attitude in any task one
performs. Teachers have to recognize that forging such an attitude can
create a serious ‘burden’. More young people start developing such an
attitude, more demand will be placed on the teachers to handle diverse
expectations, projects, ideas and endeavours. While learning will be
maximized by maximizing uncertainty, the transaction cost of teachers will
increase so as to reduce the same for the students. There are several
games, exercises and small ventures which can be thought about for
promoting this attitude among the young and senior students. There are
several psychological tools available which can also be used to measure
and monitor the moment of mind along the entrepreneurial trajectory.
Argument is not that everybody can develop such an attitude but one can
certainly suggest that majority can indeed take entrepreneurial approach to
solve various problems and expand opportunities for others.
2. Triggering collaborative enterprises:
Much of the literature considers entrepreneurial processes to be
essentially individualistic. In fact such may have been indeed be the case.
But there are numerous examples of cooperative enterprises, or individual
enterprises with collective participation. Pedagogically, business schools
have been known to foster highly individualistic, competitive and secretive
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approach. Schools have abandoned the collective enterprise more or less.
The excessive stereotyping of the career choices preceded by a very
competitive approach fosters individualistic streak in the young minds.
Unless parents and teachers start encouraging a diverse profiling of future
choices, vicious circle of narrow career choice, competitive attitude, highly
stressed schedule of learning, narrow focus on clearing exams, reinforces
narrow choices. We have to break this circle by exposing children to
diverse role models, discuss the pros and cons of these models, argue with
the parents to get freedom to pursue one’s inner desire and by mentoring
children to pursue their path. Group assignments and ventures can be
encouraged with sufficient weightage in the final exams. Rather than
testing the ability to recall, we should test the ability to apply the
knowledge. Similarly, at higher education level, different kinds of
assignments fostering collective problem solving can be encouraged with a
serious result orientation. A good example of meaningless collective
exercise is the business plan competition organized by the business
schools in which almost every participant has no intention to pursue these
plans to their logical conclusion. Such exercises may develop some skills
but also make young people very cynical.
3. Developing passion to pursue a purpose:
This is one of the most important driver of entrepreneurship. A person
or a group thereof can develop a desire to pursue a business with varying
degree of social and economic outcomes. Every economic enterprise has a
social outcome and vice versa. Business Bazigar programme on Zee TV (in
which I was one of the Jury) mobilized thousands of ideas from young
people from all over the country. Some of the rejects of that programme
actually have ended up doing much better in business than the winner.
Wini Chaddha had an interesting idea. She wanted to collect shoes of the
people in the evening and give them back in the morning after refurbishing
them. Her enterprise viz. Reboot has received wide acclaim. Likewise,
Prakash Mundhra developed a concept of branded Pooja kit for various
rituals and sacred ceremonies. Transforming an existing market by
introducing no-hassle way of pursuing sacred duties was an innovative
business plan, accepted by the market. Likewise, providing insurance,
news magazines and papers, water and music in rickshaw was an
attractive idea of Irfan. It has received very wide support in Bihar. This is
just a tip of Iceberg. Various issues of Honey Bee magazine (sristi.org)
carry large number of ideas pursued by children, farmers, artisans and
others. Not all of them have become business initiative.
4. Learning to link innovation, investment an enterprise: Three
vectors of golden triangle for rewarding creativity:
The experience of GIAN (gian.org) and NIF (nifindia.org) besides
SRISTI has made it very clear that the transaction costs of innovator in
finding investment funds or entrepreneurs is very high. It is even higher
when innovator happens to be from informal sector. Similarly an investor
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may not know the most potent ideas in the minds of rural or urban artisans
or mechanics or other young technocrats. And so is the case with
entrepreneurs who may lack both ideas and investment. How do we teach
the students the skills to reduce transaction cost (ex ante and ex poste) of
various players involved in innovation based entrepreneurship value chain.
Unless students interact with the innovators and entrepreneurs struggling
to forge the right partnership, how can one really understand the
complexity. Similarly, angle investors may have their own misgivings about
the attitude and skill shown by the entrepreneurs. Apart from field research,
entrepreneurial clinics can be a useful way of understanding the dynamics
of making this triangle happen. Organizing clearing houses can be another
way. Recently in our IPR class, I gave an assignment to students to find
licensing opportunities for the innovators. There is nothing more exciting for
a student than to close the deal for someone who otherwise wouldn’t have
been able to do so. I have organized four Inventors of India workshop
during last 10 years. First of this workshop in 1998 lead to the
establishment
of
CIIE
(Centre
of
Innovation,
incubation
and
Entrepreneurship) at IIMA with the help of Gujarat Government and NIF. To
get fifty to sixty inventors even from formal sector, I have had to go through
about 2500-3000 patents in Indian Patent Office before every workshop.
Large number of them have very viable technologies. And yet none of them
had been approached either by an investor, entrepreneur or even a
technology or management school to provide support before the workshop.
If every business school identifies the inventors through the patent
database or otherwise in one’s area of influence and offers them the
support, the whole eco system will begin to change.
5. Designing a supportive and empathetic innovation eco system:
Every innovator has a large number of requirements before he/she
can become a good entrepreneur. She needs to get her innovation
benchmarked in market as well as technology terms. Once benchmarking
is done, areas of improvement would be identified which need to be
communicated back to the innovator. She may or may not be able to
incorporate those ideas given weak access to the workshops or R&D labs
and experts. Such linkage have to be triggered for value addition.
Programmes like TePP and MVIF and Value Addition Support at DST and
NIF serve the needs of innovators from formal and informal sectors
respectively. At this stage a business development plan may be needed.
Students can help in doing market research, finding potential licences, filing
patents, doing prior art search, and mobilizing financial support. If innovator
does want to become an entrepreneur, then building partnerships with
budding entrepreneurs or existing companies is another task in which
students can help. Thus students don’t just study how to analyse the eco
system but also try to create one around different innovations and business
ideas.
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PART III. Lessons for Entrepreneurial Learners
1. Ethical standards seem to be higher among MSME. There is a
general feeling that most small entrepreneurs cut corners, don’t pay taxes
and follow unethical practices in terms of environment or business
practices. Nothing could be farther than truths. Let me illustrate. Around
three dozen technology transfers mediated by Honey Bee Network (NIF,
SRISTI and GIAN and other collaborators) have involved small and
medium size entrepreneurs. In majority of the cases, patents had not been
granted and yet entrepreneurs chose to licence technologies by paying
fees even when they could have easily copied the technologies. And we
could not have done anything legally. We have not come across such
examples as yet from large companies who would have liked to support the
innovator or licence the technologies.
2. Ethical concerns have also guided the attitude of licensees while
selecting technologies in ways that were not always obvious. For instance,
an entrepreneur selected four sprayers including a bullock drawn sprayer,
cycle drawn sprayer, micro spray and human motion powered sprayer for
pesticide. After doing initial market testing and due diligence, he came back
to GIAN West and withdrew the offer of licensing one of the sprayers which
was drawn by bullocks. He said that being an animal lover, he did not want
to take the risk of hurting the bullocks by the spray of the pesticides. He
would rather not license the technology which involved such risk. This was
the first time when we learnt that among various considerations, ethical
values can indeed play an important role in mediating technology transfer.
3. Ethics of transparent benefit sharing: There are many examples
where companies offered to help the innovator, took the technology,
improved it, commercialised it and never shared any benefits on an
ongoing basis with the innovator. The argument was that technology
actually commercialised was much modified over the original one. This is
obviously an unethical practice which Honey Bee Network does not
approve. That is why a prior informed consent is taken and all the
transactions are pursued transparently. The lesson is that sustainable
business development requires safeguarding the interest of knowledge
providers without any excuse or alibi. Another positive example is that of a
company in Hyderabad which licensed several technologies developed by
pooling the best practices in SRISTI Lab. They put the name and in a few
cases, the photograph of the innovator on the cover of the bottle of Herbal
growth promoter. They also printed an appeal on the package that if the
consumers had any innovative idea, they could write to National Innovation
Foundation. What is popularly called as crowd sourcing or mass sourcing,
was attempted by making every consumer feel like the producer of
potential solutions for future entrepreneurship. Such models constitute
important indigenous innovations in India and can provide future direction
for market development around the world.
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4. Innovators seldom make good entrepreneurs:
We have to recognize that many innovators are incorrigible
improvisers. They can seldom make two things alike. They are masters of
customisation. But they are often very poor in batch processing. If such is
indeed the case among many innovators, why make them loose their
strength. Why not find entrepreneurs who can provide batch to batch
consistency among products. The students have to learn to build upon the
strength of each stakeholder in the value chain.
5. From mass consumption to high degree of customisation:
Over the last two to three decades, the mass consumption of
uniformly designed products and services became almost a rule in the
market place. Most classical consumer needs (tailoring, shoe making,
building houses, other household consumer goods like furniture etc.)
became standardized. Thus even when we know that our left and right foot
are not same size or shape, we still bought shoes that were based on the
assumption of similarity. The result was quiet suffering of uneasiness for a
while. Can we reverse the design and consumption patterns. Can
customisation return to the centre place of the market with new ways of
fabrication, distributed manufacturing and user level design and
development of final product. Thus new industry segments might emerge in
which cell phones will be designed by the users on the street corners with
minimal or maximal functionalities as the need may be. Thus a farmer
might want only three buttons to call three children and receive their call.
He might pay only 50 Rs. for such a cell phone. India has to develop new
models of decentralized, distributed, self design product markets and help
other developing countries move along the low cost, low junk and high
sustainability through higher affordability and functionality. The pedagogy in
technology and management schools must be guided by new social
contract of inclusion based on synergy between creativity, compassion and
collaboration.
In this paper I have drawn attention to only a few ideas and lessons
hoping that readers would participate in designing a more elaborate version
of the paper. If I can practice what I am preaching, than the pedagogy will
become not only a passion but also a very inclusive and participative
purpose.
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5.2. TRANSFORMING CLASSROOM PRACTICE:
TEACHER EDUCATION AND PEDAGOGY IN INDIA
Dr. Poonam Batra
University of Delhi
(Delhi, India)
This review is an attempt to illustrate the intimate relationship
between pedagogic practices and the education of teachers within the
larger contemporary Indian socio-political context. The first part of the
paper will examine this relationship in the light of a neo-liberal economic
and social engineering oriented international policy discourse which is
centered on concerns of national competitiveness in a globalizing world.
This has gained momentum in India over the last decade with the
increasing engagement of the corporate sector in education, leading to a
superficial policy consensus. In practice the tension between policy
imperatives and the lived reality of school education continues. This is
further accentuated by an entrenched teacher education discourse and
practice that has become largely immune to interrogation and challenge.
Two parallel strands of thought can be discerned within the current
policy discourse: the neo-liberal frame of standardization, teacher
accountability and learning outcomes that regards education as an
enterprise of efficient delivery; and the academic-led perspective that
emphasizes radical change in the preparation of teachers (NCFTE, 2009)
as agents of social transformation. Given the RTE, the policy imperative is
to bring both these contending streams into the fold of education. The
agenda is to create knowledge “workers” for a “service economy”, not an
active citizenry. In this frame the pedagogic enterprise is to ‘teach to test’
and the central thrust of pedagogic practice is one of ‘control’ and
‘outcomes’. The policy-practice interface remains purposefully unexamined.
The second part of the paper will explore how classroom practice is
fastidiously tied to the manner in which teachers learn to engage with
teaching as a practical and political activity. This draws upon a wide review
of theoretical and empirical literature and a mapping of micro processes
that various institutional arrangements invoke. These institutional
arrangements are probed as the backdrop of a policy discourse that is
driven by simultaneous but contradictory persuasions, political and
bureaucratic imperatives, and academic judgment.
The attempt is to understand how social interactions within teacher
education institutions – contiguous and remote – give rise to patterns of
engagement in the teaching-learning enterprise, thus shaping pedagogy.
Two assumptions are examined in the process. First, the need to view
educational practice from the viewpoint of social science and philosophical
perspectives; not only from the perspective of the knowledge domain that is
being taught. Second, the premise that curriculum changes alone cannot
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have a great impact if cultural, social and the political expectations are not
challenged and alternatives envisioned.
The contested terrain of formal knowledge necessitates an
engagement with the epistemological underpinnings of school subject-
matter but is consciously left out of teacher education programs. It is
argued that engaging with contested terrains of knowledge in various
domains is critical in the preparation of teachers. This cannot be
adequately addressed through the school curriculum alone. Questions of
what knowledge is; its relationship with power; how knowledge is selected
and presented; how power equations of social relations based on gender,
caste, religion and language operate in educational practice and how these
are reinforced, extended or challenged to form the critical core of the
preparation of teachers are examined. For instance, it is often wondered
why the legacy of ‘logical positivists remains etched in the practice of many
science teachers’ despite attempts to redesign school curricula in the frame
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