It’s Startup Day Today
Living without a source of living is being a lamp without oil. There seems no life and no light. An ‘unemployed’ existence is a worse negation of life than death itself. Life ceases to be what it could potentially have been. There has to be a way of securing the basic necessities of life for everyone living on this planet. In the words of Swami Vivekananda, “Man is guided by the stomach. He walks and the stomach goes first and the head afterwards.
Have you not seen that? It will take ages for the head to go first.” One can find this quote essentially and immediately true, without requiring to put much pressure on the nerves. Without an economic element to any religious, spiritual, scientific or social philosophy, there has hardly been a great following from the common people. In other words, earning precedes learning. From the biographies of some world class scientists and other great men, we learn how many of them resorted to part time menial jobs to sustain on the path of learning.
Even now, a huge chunk of the people is dying hard to manage a subsistence level of living. Despite our wholesome claims of abundance and self sufficiency, the issue of earning livelihood continues to be the prime challenge in most human habitations and the organizations managing the affairs of government. The idea that government may provide jobs to everyone to eliminate unemployment, sounds quite appealing, but implementing the same on ground, presents several challenges and complexities. Funding a government job for everyone would require significant resources, potentially leading to higher taxes or increased national debt. The government would therefore need to constantly check the balance of job creation with fiscal responsibility which is pretty much difficult.
Moreover, providing jobs does not guarantee that those would be meaningful or relevant to individuals’ skills and aspirations. Jobs that are not aligned with workers’ capabilities and qualifications, may lead to dissatisfaction and lower productivity. In other words, a job is not just for monetary gains to the employee but also for the practical fulfillment of some given specified goals and objectives set by the employer in the better interest of the organization.
In case of government jobs, when the set targets are not achieved even beyond the stipulated period of time, it becomes one of the compelling reasons to pave way for privatization and in worst cases, leads to closure and forceful retirement of the employees via golden handshake schemes. Therefore a skill set supplemented by an ethical conduct of workers is what can work wonders in grabbing the opportunities of employment and perpetually carrying it on with great beauty and bounty.
On the other hand, the mismatch between traditional education and the demands of current job market has been yet another cause of concern for those at the helm of affairs. In that backdrop, the New Education Policy NEP-2020 envisages to resort to skill based education in the course curriculum of colleges.
While as the middle class of the society has always been the potential pool of professionals, those with a generational wealth should preferentially be groomed as future entrepreneurs. This is what the new education policy essentially aims at. Then there are those who are neither academically sound nor do they carry the capital. They can be tied to startups sponsored by government schemes after acquiring the necessary skill set.
Though not so recent, yet a new way of earning livelihood is by switching to startups. A startup is any new business venture that aims to create a new product or service. Startups are often characterized by their innovative approach, limited resources, and focus on growth. Startups are defined by their potential for high risk yet high reward.
A startup company or project is undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. The concept of “startups” as we understand it today did not have a single inventor or originator, but rather evolved over time. The modern concept of startups is deeply tied to Silicon Valley, the tech hub in California, particularly from the mid-20th century onward.
For instance, the Fairchild Semiconductor, founded in 1957 by a group of engineers, is often considered one of the first true tech startups. It was founded by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, who later went on to create Intel. As Silicon Valley grew, the development of venture capital (VC) funding in the 1960s and 1970s provided financial backing to nascent tech companies. VC investors like Arthur Rock were instrumental in funding these early startups, enabling the rise of companies like Intel and Apple.
Keeping pace with the same, India launched the initiative of Startups on 16th January 2016, a day dedicated to honoring the transformative power of startups. In the last 10 years, the growth of the Indian economy has been fuelled by startups spearheaded by the telecom revolution which made affordable data (knowledge) accessible to crores of people. The pandemic further gave a huge fillip to e-commerce and necessitated the startup culture. Startup India has rolled out several programs with the objective of supporting entrepreneurs, and transforming India into a country of job creators instead of job seekers.
The 3rd edition of the India National Startup Day Summit and Awards 2025 will be held today on 16 January 2025 in Bangalore, to recognize and reward the effort of such Startups in India, which have the potential to enable the vision to make India an Atmanirbhar Bharat (self sufficient and self reliant India) in the coming years. By establishing National Startup Day, the government aims to celebrate the entrepreneurial successes that have contributed significantly to the economy and to inspire future generations to take up the entrepreneurial path.
Dr. Qudsia Gani, Head,
Dept. of Physics, Govt. Degree College, Pattan
