There is nothing to hide in the fact that not all is right in the implementation of the ‘Year of Entrepreneurs’ (YoE) which was announced with much fanfare by the State government as part of its innovative theme wise policy declaration. And at that time, the decision of the DAN government to declare 2010-11 as Year of Entrepreneur was welcomed as a step in the direction by this newspaper. So what has gone wrong with this ambitious programme of the government? One cannot but sympathise with the grievances brought forward by the Educated Unemployed Union of Nagaland (EUUN) who had no other option but to go public with what it alleged was “the dubious selection” process and off course the delay of the Government in implementing the ‘Year of Entrepreneurs’ (YOE). As rightly pointed, after having such a huge expectation from the government and waiting patiently for one whole year it must indeed dampen the spirit of the selected Entrepreneurs who had completed ‘Entrepreneurial Development Programme’ (EDP) Training from Indian Institute of Entrepreneurship (IIE) Guwahati and Dimapur. According to the EUUN the government was now selecting only a handful from amongst the 1000 original list and as such it has raised some pertinent question. The concerned department on its part has also done well to clear doubts raised by the aggrieved party. However the clarification from the government is not fully convincing and will be a little hard to digest especially for the majority of selected entrepreneurs who will have to wait as “their cases will be taken up batch wise in the next financial year starting April 2012 till all the 1000 entrepreneurs are accommodated”. Then the other thing to note is the ambiguous explanation given that the “selection of 300 entrepreneurs for the current financial year 2011-12 is purely made and strictly restricted to the number of targets based on the additional allocation sanctioned by the Commission under PMEGP scheme”. So that means the few selected (300 entrepreneurs) is based on sanction under the PMEGP. This is somewhat contradictory to another point made by the government wherein it says that the “projects of those entrepreneurs which fall outside the purview of the PMEGP scheme will be covered under NIDC-50, NABARD-50, and NHHDC-30”. So everything seems to be in a limbo without any clear-cut direction and this has been the hallmark of the Year of Entrepreneurs’, right from the time it was announced.
Now the question remains as to what has happened to the sum of Rs 10 crore which was proposed during the Budget session in July 2010 and announced by none other than the Chief Minister. In fact at that time, this column had even suggested that the YoE program needed a re-look for some of the obvious reasons that we are discussing now. Firstly even at that time, the government was not very clear as to how this amount of Rs 10 crores was to be utilized. At that time this column had commented that assisting and sponsoring 1000 entrepreneur would be a “huge task”. Then we had also mentioned that “success will depend on more than just a good programme” and that “other things will also come into play”. At that time we had stated that the “ratio of Rs 10 crores for 1000 entrepreneur seems a bit unviable” meaning that every entrepreneur will be entitled to Rs 1 lakh only. We had therefore made the suggestion that this was way too little for such an ambitious programme and “either the fund allocation should have been increased or if that was not possible the number of entrepreneurs to be selected should have been brought down”. “That way at least we will be ensuring quality by selecting only the most deserving people and backing them up with more funds…Whether setting aside Rs 10 crores for 1000 entrepreneur will do justice to the programme is a question that needs a re-look”. It seems to the case that the government is facing a dilemma over availability of funds. Perhaps this shows how poorly we are managing and utilizing our financial resources. Whether it is too late or not, the government must be honest and tell the truth whether it can do justice to the 1000 entrepreneurs it had selected.
