Keynote Address by
Smt Shiela Dikshit
Chief Minister of Delhi, India

At the Plenary Session 3: Public private Partnership for Sustainable Entrepreneurship Development
"Thought Leadership Conference" Special Plenary
Date: 30 October 2003
Venue: Balayogi Hall, Parliament Library Building, Parliament House, New Delhi

Subodh Bhargava ji, Lakshmi ji and all the panellists who are here with me on the dais and all the very eminent and all the very distinguished young participants on this very very important summit that is taking place at a very very appropriate time.

We in India have somehow not yet quite shed off our employment vision which has been ‘get a job’ and not just get a job, but ‘get a job in the government’. The time has come, perhaps it is already perhaps too late for the time to have come where we have to have a re-look at the future that awaits the youth of our country. What is it that we in the government and those in civil society can offer to the young of India. What do they look forward to? I am going to frank enough t so say that in the past 2-3 decades we have not been able to attract talent into our country. In fact this country produces about the best technologies, the best engineers, best doctors, the best nurses, the best marketing managers, the best that the corporate sector require in financial institutions management and this training has attracted attention the world over - the quality of this training; the quality of the Indian mind. There has been an enormous flux of talent going out of our country seeking jobs and opportunities everywhere else except our own nation. So even if we do not very much care or not too burdened by the fact that our talent is going out of the country we do feel that this talent requires to be used by the country now. How is it, that the information technology and the best run hospitals all over the world, the Europe, the Americas, even in South East Asia, the best amongst them are Indians. How is that they do not stay back in India and we as a nation have to do without those who we have trained – the parents have trained, the national has trained we have put in our nation’s wealth including financial wealth into training these people and they do not feel it attractive enough to stay back. Therefore this summit will, I am sure, introspect and how all the stakeholders which the youth seeking an opportunity, the youth starting in life, how he or she has to be given an incentive by all the stakeholders, whether they are corporate sector, the government, the NGOs, the financial institutions – everywhere, wherever, whichever the area can create jobs - the universities, the centres of science and development – everywhere. what is that we need to do so that our youth do not find it much easier and more attractive to jut go outside the country and not stay back in the country in which they have been born. That I believe is the biggest challenge in front of us. President Abdul Kalam’s Vision 2021 is a landmark document in this direction. I think if we take off from that landmark document and try and sync that way and later on plan on those lines there is no reason whatsoever India why cannot have all its young people usefully employed not only for their personal selves but also in nation building.

Bhargava ji spoke about the Bhagidari system that we have been initiated in governance in Delhi. What is this Bhagidari? it is a very very simple thing called partnership. In all democracies we believe that the stakeholder is not just the government who has been elected for five years, but the more important pivotal stakeholder is the citizen. Because the citizen decides the kind of government they want and having decided the kind of government they want the next job which to my mind is even more important is to see that this government governs the way that the citizens would like it to govern. Therefore, it becomes government through partnership. The three triangles being the citizen at the top, the bureaucracy and the political government of the day at the bottom. How do we create an understanding of each other? How do we bring out a synergy between these three which the citizen at the top? We have a hang up. Our bureaucratic systems are old and archaic, our thinking is old and archaic. Even today when a young person looks out for a job and I have met thousands of them who come to us seeking a government job. When I often ask a 30 year old or 35 year old, ‘alright you are seeking a job but what are you doing for your living now?’ the answer invariably is ‘I am working in a private concern’. Is that not a job? He says ‘no, that is not a job; a job means a government job’. So that mindset, the security that mind has that if I get the government job I am alright for the next 30 years whether I work or I do not work. That mind set has to be changed. Another mindset which I would plead to be changed is that don’t become a job seeker; become a job creator. All the young people of India who get even a minimal amount of training can become job creators. If a young entrepreneur wants to buy a taxi in Delhi, for instance, there are lots and lots of institutions, government policies, banks etc which are willing to give that young entrepreneur, if you have a good driving licence buy a taxi. Immediately the person who buys the taxi can earn an amount of money - I am talking about delhi, please remember that – which can run into thousands of rupees a month, not only will he be able to pay back whatever he has taken as loan but also he will employ, may be two people, the cleaner -one who will the taxi and the other is driver who drives when he is tired. He cannot work for 24 hours. I believe in one thing that is, instead of seeking jobs, create jobs and that is where your summit comes in very very handy and very very important.

How do we create jobs for ourselves? I can tell you a small story about a group of women in Bihar - in the city of Jamshedpur. These group of women belonged to a tribal belt whose only life was that they would cook the whole day, emaciated bodies, look after their children as best as they could and look forward to a beating up by their husbands at night because everybody invariably comeback drunk. An enterprising NGO went there, created a co-operative of these women who put in Rs. 10 or 15 – I don’t know the exact amount, and taught them, ‘you know something very well, that is cooking. So why don’t you just get together ten of you and become cooks, not just cooks cooking home food but cooking homelike food for communities whether it is a birth or a death or a marriage or any other festivity that takes place, you go their and do the cooking’. That is how it started. In the beginning these women bought utensils then they went up to buying not just cooking utensils but also serving utensils, then they went forward and bought tents so that the tentwallah would not be called. These co-operative women who would have the tents with them and supply them to the neighbourhood. In one year’s time they had started earning enough money not only to be put in their kitty but also to be individually able to distribute it amongst each other. Two years down the line, their skills spread to other villages, they were able to buy a three-wheeled scooter when they would carry their tents and utensils to their areas and do the cooking and come back. That was a co-operative effort where the NGO was a catalyst, a guiding force and these women in two years’ time not only became earners but also able to face up to society, to their husbands who would not dare beat them. I can give any number of examples coming from Andhra, Gujarat where women have got together, form these little co-operatives. I would suggest to this summit that co-operatives is one means of collectively getting people, their financial synergy, their skills together and bringing them together so that they do not dependent on an outside agency to give them finances but they collect it amongst themselves. It could be a small beginning. Do please look at this sector also. This can happen not only where women are concerned it could also happen with young boys who can come out and form these co-operatives.

The bottom like what I am saying is and what I would like to convey to you all is, that jobs are not the answer to unemployment. There was an era, there was period in history where perhaps getting a job was the aim. Even today if you go to the villages of India, I am not too sure if the CII takes that into account, the amount of industrial development that goes on there. The weekly village markets called the "haat’ which sells wares made locally whether it is furniture, shoes, readymade garments, candy, sweets, implements, toys, sugar, ground cereals, daals and could be little machines also. Now, of course, the cell phones also there. They buy cell phones in the village haat also. That village haat which takes once a week has some manufacturer, some producer behind it. I don’t know that kind of manufacturing activity is taken into account when we think of what India is doing and what it is using and how it is catering to the demands of very very large population. We have a huge population and a huge market. If entrepreneurship, sense of adventure can be instilled into all the training institutions that are there I think that would be a step in the right direction. We have a university in Deli called the Guru Gobind Indraprasth University and one of the courses that I intend to start very soon just a course on Entrepreneurship – nothing else. How do you become an entrepreneur. It is as scientific or as easy as anything else. If we get out of this syndrome of just looking for a job and try to become an entrepreneur or creator I think we would have gotton over the hump that we are facing today. We have plenty of schemes, the Rozgarh yojana, so on and so forth, make use of them. I would also like to say that CII and BYST can help, guide us governments in that. That procedures are extremely difficult. We in Delhi are willing to give Rs. 50000 to women, we are willing to give a lakh of rupees to students. Take this money and pay it in easy intalments with a small amount of interest but get on with what ever you would like to do. You could be a plumber, you could be an electrician, you could be a carpenter, or whatever it is you want to become. Small shops, big shops, fashion designer so many things are there. We need guidance for is and I am very very serious about this. How do we get the bureaucratic system simplified. That I can assure you is an uphill task. I used to work for an export organisation which is to export garments. I took it upon myself as a Chief Executive, that I must simplify forms which are required to be filled by an exporter when he exports or when he imports. We had a small study done. The ministry of commerce was very excited about this and they set up a committee which was to bring out a simplified form studying Korea, Singapore, the Middle East and so on so that we could simplify the form. I am sure you can guess the answer. Instead of the 6-page form it became a 17-page form. It goes round and round and round. It brings us to another basic question, how can we, when will we change the bureaucratic stranglehold.

Mr Bhargava was just talking to me that many people in Delhi who have not got their votes registered. It is a harrowing experience. You are physically there but you have to fill in a four page form called VI then you have to submit a form called VII, at the end of the day you get so frustrated and say ‘I would just stop politics, I won’t do anything about it’. How do we bring out a system which suits the 21st century India. The basic thing I think is trust and faith in each other. Thanks to the rule of the British we have not given our habit of suspecting. If the person comes across to me on the other side of the table my first thing is, ‘no, he has got some axe to grind, let me first start with suspicion’. That is another area that I think we need to look at - both the corporate sector, the NGOs, and the government This will only happen if the voice of the people is high enough, the pitch is high enough, the demand is high enough, vociferous enough that we want a change, we want a 21st century India and not an eighteenth century or sixteenth century India.

These are the challenges which are in front of all of us whether we belong to financial institutions or NGOs. There is a saying in India the hardest thing is to earn your first thirty thousand rupees, after that it becomes easy because you have learnt all the tricks. But why should you learn the tricks. You should be able to walk in take what you have and I believe that we must have faith in the person who comes in as an entrepreneur, first time entrepreneur who says ‘I want to start something on my own, I want to do something on my own, don’t kill my spirit’. We can do that. We need to collectively very seriously, holistically take decisions and see that those decisions are implemented. We have wonderful plans, wonderful ideas, the best in the world, we have the finest DNA in the world when it comes to implementation we start suspecting. Even if we wrong 5% or 3% or 10% it is well worth because 80% would have gained and the country would be richer by if these 80% are allowed to work with their entrepreneurial skills.

With these words I would like thank you very much, really thank you Lakshmi ji and Prince Charles Foundation for having conducted this seminar and all those who have come here from various parts of Asia and India I would like to extend a warm welcome to Delhi.

Thank you.

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