The phenomena of social entrepreneurship and the concept of social enterprises are getting growing attention, from policy makers, academia and practitioners, across the globe. While the Keynesian Social Democracy of post World... [ view full abstract ]
The phenomena of social entrepreneurship and the concept of social enterprises are getting growing attention, from policy makers, academia and practitioners, across the globe. While the Keynesian Social Democracy of post World War II economic and political context was short lived to be a welfare model in most parts of Europe, the free market ideology of neo-liberalism continued to be characterized by deregulated markets and privately owned enterprises, with minimal involvement of the state in the economic sector. Part of the process of moving over to neo-liberalism required the ‘‘corporatization’’ and eventual privatization of previously state-owned assets (Roper and Cheney 2005). While economic enterprises were being privatised the concomitant reduction in state’s engagement with social sector left a space for social enterprises to grow and become significant in addressing many of the social problems and developmental deficits. Thus social entrepreneurs are increasingly seen to have proposed and implemented innovative entrepreneurial solutions for addressing social problems, which the government machineries and private businesses have still not been able to tackle in its entirety (Osberg, 2007; Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, 2012). Notwithstanding this acknowledgement that the concept has gained, there still exists a lack of consensus on deciding what constitutes a social enterprise and what does not. Despite the clarity that the broader definitions of social enterprises provide, demarcating it as organisations with a strong social mission, offering innovative entrepreneurial solutions to the existing social problems, this confusion still seems to prevail (Dees, 1994, 1998a, 1998b; Light, 2008; Nicholls, 2008).
This paper discusses how this phenomenon unfolded itself in India, emphasising on the key milestones from Indian history and social movements. Though the Indian story of social entrepreneurship is seen to have no drastic exceptions from the global annals, in terms of its spirit; the episodes that evolved to the formation of social enterprises, were seen to have a sense of strong community orientation behind it. Broadly speaking, the Indian social enterprises were predominantly seen to work on the pressing socio-economic issues through innovative approaches. Generally, in India, SEs are constituted as Public Charitable Trusts, Registered societies, Not For Profit companies, Cooperative Societies, Producer’s companies and Non Banking Financial Companies, Private or Public companies, Limited Liability Partnerships (LLP) etc.
The paper further tries to analyse the existing social enterprises in India using various indicators such as the major drivers, the mission focus, profit distribution, sustainability and scalability and finally social value. Analysis brought to the fore the fact that Indian SE landscape is witnessing a growing attraction towards for profit models. This change in preference for models may be attributed to the growing need to have access to mainstream capital. Hence, many non-profit SEs are transforming themselves into for-profit structures. This trend is very evident in respect of SEs in the field of microfinance. This analysis gives important insights into the need for realising the possibilities of mission drift and dilution of social value by inclination towards market oriented / profit models and thereby the need to have necessary policy initiatives so that the social enterprises do not deviate significantly from its original path of addressing pressing social concerns and developmental deficits amidst growing neo-liberalisation and marketisation of the state.
