Древний город Карон

Sustainable business development is the basis for the stability of the future economy.

Recent years, there is often discussing of new popular (famous) topic "Sustainability of livelihoods” in business communities, as well as among leaders of all countries and international organizations. However “Sustainability Livelihoods” it’s not just a topic or direction in business – it’s a whole scientific direction. I would like to present you an exclusive interview with Dr Braja Mishra, an academic and development consultant from India.

 After completing my Masters in Social Work from a premier university in India Dr Braja Mishra worked in the areas of ‘development and displacement of indigenous community’, which further deepened your interest to study more about ‘development’. He received a doctoral fellowship from Government of India and completed his PhD in Development Studies. Then he joined as a mid level Officer in Government of India and worked in the areas of Labour and Employment. After a decade he felt quite saturated in Government employment and switched over to non-government development sector where he got ample freedom and diverse opportunity to work on innovative livelihood projects, imparting training to livelihood practitioners and teaching Rural Development/Management students in the universities. Alongside, he got involved in policy studies.  Therefore, his present portfolio comprises of programme design/ development on livelihoods, imparting training to livelihood practitioners,  conducting policy studies, impact assessment of projects/programmes, mentoring young professionals and strengthening community based institutions. 

- What is the main cause that the business community is pay a special attention to the sustainable development (sustainable livelihoods) of business?

- Working towards sustainable development is everybody’s responsibility if we wish our future generations to survive and grow. Often it is perceived to be government and or non-profit driven movement, which is a misnomer. For moving towards sustainable development we need to bring innovations all across like sustainable habitat (city/town or village), sustainable and climate-smart agriculture, clean energy, improved health care and conservation of natural resources and bio-diversity. For these innovations we need different products and services, which need to be manufactured/produced and provided by the farming community, industries and business community for their survival and sustainability. Thus, business community can no longer afford to remain indifferent to sustainable practices. Besides, they have relatively more power to influence all production systems as well as delivery to the end consumers, and therefore, have a critical role to play.  

- How important is the role of business in building of sustainable future for the entire population on the earth?

- This has been more or less addressed in answer to previous question. To further elaborate, there are two main reasons why the role of business will be increasingly critical to our sustainable future- 1) many of the key priorities and issues of sustainable development are intertwined with business activities. Companies emit greenhouse gases, consume energy and natural resources, require water and transport, use toxic materials, and produce waste. Business has an influence on virtually all-major global environmental changes; and 2) increasing reliance on private sector for wealth creation and the growing interconnectedness of the world economy has increased the role and influence of business.

- According to our training scope of the EDII, we have been introduced with the work of rural entrepreneurs in India, so it’s surprised that with lack of such level of Higher Education in this sector the organization operates exact and clearly. It is need to be highlighted that this section of industry is sufficiently developed in India. We would like you to share with us how the entrepreneurs achieved that and what was the Government role?

- Though farming sector supports large number of livelihoods in India apart from ensuring food security to the country, farmers’  economy has largely remained at subsistent level due to several factors. Apart from Indian agriculture being dominated by small and marginal farmers (who constitute 80%) due to its large population, they  face challenges in accessing land, water and irrigation infrastructure, inputs, credit, technology, warehouse/cold storage and market. Besides, there are emerging challenges like risk and vulnerabilities due to climate change and natural calamities. The enterprises based on agri-produces are owned mostly by non-farmers who corner the major benefits and farmers continue to remain poor. To provide equitable benefits to farmers some radical measures are required like enhancing holding capacity of farmers by providing credit support to maintain their cash flow, where they can hold back their produces till they get better price, infrastructure support like cold storage to save the perishable produces from spoilage, encouraging farmers’ collectives to enhance bargaining power, linking them with better value chains etc. Though, it is happening in a few places with support of targeted intervention, it has to happen on massive scale.  

- I heard that the Government of India cooperates very closely with rural entrepreneurs, support them in the development of business. Could you please explain us what includes the support and cooperation.

- Government of India has progressive policy and programmes  to support rural entrepreneurship development , but their success much depends on the governance at the federal state level. It is the federal state and the local administration which  implement and micromanage the programmes. Where the federal state government is proactive the success rate is higher. To be very honest, the real success rate is very low for various reasons.  The most recent flagship programme of the government is Start-Up-India where innovative ideas of existing or budding entrepreneurs is being promoted to drive sustainable growth and generate large scale employment opportunities by providing  handholding and funding support, incentives like exemptions from taxes and levies, incubation opportunities through industry-academic partnership and removing several barriers to entry.

- What proportion of the assistance and support is provided by the international community Village Entrepreneurship.

- International community is , in fact, playing a very supportive role in augmenting village entrepreneurship. Institutions like World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Japan International Cooperation Agency, and International Fund for Agriculture Development and others have been providing financial as well as technical support. However, with India emerging as a fast growing economy, its internal resource base is expanding and therefore dependency on international community on certain areas is declining. 

- During the classes I noticed that you had mentioned about agriculture and natural resources very often and according to your biography you have studied and worked in this field. What had stimulate you to choose this field of entrepreneurship?

- I come from a lower income farming family and have seen agriculture and natural resources based livelihood system very closely  and understand its importance. Therefore, it is a natural interest for me to work in this area. Unless farmers and forest dependent communities are supported both in backward and forward linkages of the value chains, it is not easy to bring large scale impact on their livelihoods. I have worked in a number of natural resource based livelihood promotion projects and am very convinced that with supportive ecosystem farm and forest based livelihoods can be made as attractive as non-farm based. For example, India being second largest fruit producer in the world, its position in fruit processing and export is at a very dismal level.

- Our country Tajikistan is also considered an agrarian country, with a rich content of natural agro-cultural resources. What would you advise to our entrepreneurs to deal with or pay more attention on?

- The structure of Tajikistan economy is more or less like that of India. However, with low population density Tajikistan is in an advantageous position. The same arguments hold good both for India and Tajikistan as far as promotion of agro based and rural entrepreneurship is concerned.

Shahnoz Komilzoda

Dushanbe-Ahmadabad

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