Jodhpur, 11 April 2023: Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur and Jodhpur City Knowledge and Innovation Foundation (JCKIF) in partnership with a social enterprise, Contact Base, Essex Business School of the University of Essex, the Mehrangarh Museum Trust and the International Entrepreneurship Forum, organized the conference ‘Entrepreneurship as a Social Movement’ from 5th to 7th April 2023 at IIT Jodhpur campus. The conference was organized as a series of panel discussions, field visit, citizen engagement and related student performances / competitions.
The first day of the conference began with the session titled Towards Entrepreneurship as a Social Movement: Ideas for Social and Cultural Change and Sustainability Issues chaired. The session brough forth the criticality of putting citizens at the center and ensuring respect for artisans to activate their agency such that they can initiate and sustain ventures which create social and economic value.
List of Sessions on Day 1 and Day 2 of the conference has been attached in the annexure.
The second session titled Networks, Ecosystems and Cultural Dynamics characterized entrepreneurship as a collective endeavour, involving a varied set of support organizations making it a social act and proposed the act of marrying the creative economy with commerce so that ‘culture and heritage do not remain in a romantic hazy mist but are energized by the sunlight of commerce.
The third session titled Tourism and Social Innovation deliberated on the role of tourism in social, economic and community level development and the importance of soft skills development of the communities involved. Surge in domestic experiential tourism, increasing participation of women and the related policy push provided by the GoI was highlighted. The session concluded with a poem rendition on the life of a tourist guide made by an IIT J student.
The sessions on the second day, apart from having panel discussions, included multiple components of student participation. Student participation in form of skits, documentary, poetry, canvas making and IDEATHON, all focussed on dimensions of citizen entrepreneurship was derived from the pre-conference field visits that over 30 IIT Jodhpur students made to the citizens homes and workplace as also the nooks and corners of the city. The raw material of their performance was derived from over 300 student-hours in the field and over 50 GB of digital data, which was finally made sense of by the students over another 150 student-hours at ANVISA (A NoVel Innovation SpAce), the innovation centre for students at IIT Jodhpur.
The first session of the second day titled Technology and Social Mission in Entrepreneurship and Innovation impressed upon the need to leverage technology in a manner that it exploits the culture and heritage to the advantage and sustenance of the communities which produce and live it as opposed to allowing technology to exploit the producers themselves. The session concluded with the finals of the IDEATHON competition where top 3 shortlisted student teams out of 21 participating teams, made their presentations on stage.
The second session titled Public Policy making on Citizen-Focused Entrepreneurship, Economic and Social Development engaged on the need and means to bridge the gap between the policy makers and the grassroot innovators, emphasizing the need to understand the emotions and operations of the field. Students presented a skit showcasing the experience that tourists of Jodhpur have with the guides and another group showcased their video documentary on arts and crafts of Jodhpur.
The third session titled Citizen’s Entrepreneurship: Research/Data Analytics to Support Entrepreneurship Research, Policy and Practice brought out the need to focus on purposive engagement with local communities and facilitating the organic evolution of citizens entrepreneurship at the pace and scale which best suits the individual community. Students presented a canvas depicting the life of artisans and tourist guides while a short conversation was held with two citizen artisans on stage and two traditional businessmen residing on the slopes of Mehrangarh fort.
The third day of the conference saw two large buses full of conference participants wheeling down to two artisan villages. The first one, Barnawa Jageer, was in deep desert wilderness around 120 Km from Jodhpur while the other one, Salwas, was at the periphery of Jodhpur city. Conference participants including Shri Mukhmeet Singh Bhatia, Dr Lalit K Panwar, Prof Jay Mitra, Dr Jyotsna Jha and Prof Santanu Chaudhury as also students and faculty members, facilitated by Mr Amitava Bhattacharya and his team, engaged with the musicians and craftsmen at their homes and got to experience the stark and often harsh reality of the context in which the magical art and craft forms are produced.
The voices during the conference were many, varied and multidimensional. A few snippets:
HH Shri Gaj Singh II: “first, education is important... second having available example that someone has become an entrepreneur…when they see it, it impresses people and they want to look into that creating an environment through education, government policy and the example is very important”
Prof Jay Mitra (Faculty of Business Enterprise and Innovation at Essex Business School) – “the active participation of students in the conference and of artisans who were not only in audience but were part of the engagement that is not usual, that is not common, a very pleasant surprise and effective outcomes”
Dr Lalit K Panwar (Chairperson, Vivekananda Global University and ex-Secretary Tourism, GOI) - “Toursim has huge potential for innovation as shown by Rajasthan in form of Palace on wheels, heritage hotels, surajkund festival, pushkar fair Adventure tourism, Jaipur literature festival at the same time carrying capacity of the fragile ecosystem has to be accounted for”
Mr Mukhmeet Singh Bhatia (Secretary, Ministry of Minority Affairs, GOI)– “when you actually meet people in their context, you realize what all is happening a new model of engagement is required in the government which goes beyond monitoring investment we are attempting through new programs to understand and act upon data that is captured from field engagement-based activities.”
Prof Ashok Banerjee (Director, IIM Udaipur), ‘Entrepreneurship means solving a problem first secondly through this journey we create economic empowerment third of course is creating wealth for the nation'.
Mr Amitava Bhattacharya (Founder and CEO, Contact Base)– “responsibility of social enterprise is to make the communities ready for entrepreneurship, to work as a catalyst to ensure that returns of activity go back to communities”
Ms Premlata Poonia (Founder, Hamari Laado and doctoral student at IITJ): “At education system level, getting kids exposed to volunteering, community engagement, iterative projects, failure has to become a part of our life and living project... that's when we can say that social practices have changed”
Shri Jakir Hussain (Bone and Horn craftsman, National award winner) “We are often not able to bring the original reality of our craft as we have little education. IIT is helping us overcome this through its initiatives. If students and faculty continue engaging with us, we will get the appropriate platform to take our art to its rightful glory.”
Dr G S Toteja (CEO, JCKIF) - "JCKIF is a platform to bring together the energy and innovation of various institutions. Apart from various work streams like medical technology, water etc, we are working towards providing various hard and soft resources for the artisan community, and this conference will help us take our effort forward."
Prof Santanu Chaudhury (Director IIT Jodhpur) – “dialogues between different disciplines like social science, engineering and economics are important for building up a wholesome understanding and providing support to the creative economy which is what this conference attempted. discovery to innovation is a cycle which we are used to but the cycle of creativity, which is innate to us, to innovation is a very valuable phenomenon that can create a social entrepreneurship revolution. Social entrepreneurship of our times exists in context of technology; technology can meaningfully exploit creativity. this forum has initiated dialogue around technology for social equity and we have moved forward on that path.”
The conference has now set into motion various action and research streams which will bring the faculty and students of IIT Jodhpur in intimate collaboration with citizen artisans of Jodhpur and larger Rajasthan towards the cause of entrepreneurship as a social movement.
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