A basic economics class basically starts with you being taught the four pillars of an economy: Labour, Infrastructure, Entrepreneurship and Governance.
Entrepreneurship is an essential, weighty pillar of any economy. It generates workforce and employment which in turn adds to the country’s GDP boosting its financial standing, resources and development.
All the four pillars of a which support a country’s economic health are closely related. Good governance equals a good startup culture which equals impressive rates of employment, and good infrastructure equals unchallenged efficiency in the workings of a company.
However, it all starts with competent governance. In the presence of incompetent governance, even the brightest of startups can begin to crumble. They can be burdened with heavy taxes, lack of governmental support, and an inability to expand at the right time because of being caught up in legal obligations. All this is especially true for organizations operating at a grass root level. This is a basic operational fact which doesn’t require to be consolidated with survey findings.
India is a massive gold mine of talent and innovation. There are innovations happening in every corner of the country. From innovations like affordable sanitary napkins which have their roots in the villages of rural India, to companies like PayTM facilitating digital payments, there is an app and a website for every service in India. MakeMyTrip for travel arrangements, UrbanClap for housing services and technical assistance and so on..!
However, India’s population explosion and investors being choosy and rather miserly in their investments, India’s startup and entrepreneurial ecosystem have suffered a blow giving rise to unemployment, and a rather static start-up ecosystem. When there is no lack of talent, innovation, and effort, it’s a logical assumption to conclude that there are governmental inefficiencies hurdling a what could possibly be a thriving ecosystem. In entrepreneurship, the entities of private and government closely interact precisely because there are some legalities involved in registering a Pvt Ltd company with the ministry of corporate affairs. These legalities can either be a boon or a curse for a country’s startup ecosystem. That all depends on the government. The government’s job is not just to pass friendly laws but make sure they are being implemented on the ground.
India has had a rather hefty problem of hasty, botched up shady implementation of laws. A rather important flaw of the system which successive governments over the years have failed to recognize, let alone fix. A very good example of this is the initiative of Start-Up India. What could’ve come as a blessing to budding innovators and entrepreneurs, following promises like three years tax exemption, absolutely failed to deliver and crumbled drastically, As of 2018, it’s rather hard to see people approaching Start-Up India for the success of their startups?
A survey conducted by social media community platform LocalCircles, among more than 33,000 startups provides an insight into how far the Start-Up India initiative has helped ease the lives of people aiming to start a company, around 80 per cent of startups said that they haven’t benefited in any way. And with the coming of the GST, it has toppled the promises of Start-Up India and proved counterproductive. Commands like reverse charge on foreign services such as hosting, database retrieval, pay per use services used by start-ups go against the premise of Start-up India Mission. According to the report, because of all this, many companies have shifted their base to Singapore, even though their market is in India. Thus Start-Up India proves to be yet another egg in the basket of hastily drafted laws which prove illogical and harden the processes they aim at relieving.
On the other hand, the MUDRA YOJANA PROGRAM, to boost entrepreneurship at the grass root level in order to create a what the PM called – the third level of the industrial sector, the personal sector. The Mint states
” There are three types of loans under PMMY: Shishu (up to Rs.50,000), Kishore (from Rs.50,001 to Rs.5 lakh) and Tarun (from Rs.500,001 to Rs.10,00,000). Credit Suisse estimates that the total amount of loans disbursed under the PMMY programme crossed Rs.1.25 trillion as of March 2016. Out of 32.7 million borrowers, 30.3 million borrowers were in the Shishu category.”
Here are some steps that the Indian Government can take to increase and enhance start-up functioning in India :
- Recognise that its implementation is flawed.
An age-old defect in Indian Governance which needs to be fixed is for the government to recognise that merely writing laws is not enough. They are, at the end of the day just words on a paper. They are guidelines for a framework to come into place, for things to happen a certain way. Except that they aren’t happening! Are those words supposed to act on themselves or are we using these guidelines supposed to set up a foundation for a law to come to life? A policy maker’s job or a lawmakers job is not finished by just drafting a law.
- Set up economic policies that are start-up friendly.
The example of the Life Circle survey proves that even if a law for startups is in place, setting up systems like GST which prove contradictory to the entrepreneurial initiatives completely thwart the purposes of these initiatives. Its a wasted effort on the part of the government and needless to say . of no help to the public. Economic policies are bound to each other and need to function in a way that they complement each other and not contradict each other.
- Remove ambiguity from the laws it makes.
A misuse of a law doesn’t just happen because the authority in charge is corrupt, it’s also because there are grey areas in the law which in turn are used to mislead the populace it aims to help. Certain areas of in clarity can lead to manipulation of the law.
- Interact with the populace more.
Government surveys and numbers are often to boost political rhetoric and may not be reliable. To ensure credibility and to judge whether a govt policy is working or not. It’s important that the government checks and takes notes of things on the ground. And produce evidence which is reliable enough for the people to entrust its faith in that policy. As a common man, one rarely has access to that deep an info, even though we have the right to know. At the end of the day, the ultimate judgement of a policy’s success lies with the people, not the government.
Starting a company is no small feat, and the government is SUPPOSED to give all the aid and support it can as entrepreneurship smoothes out economic governance and can even bolster economic figures of the ruling government. Why then, the lack of support?
Author’s bio : Shanker Rungta is an experienced blogger Affiliated with QuickCompany which deals with next-gen AI-powered legal and intellectual property products like online Trademark Registration in India for great user experience.
