by Subhanjan Sengupta | Posted 5th September 2018

The sun glares in a tropical mid-summer day over a remote village at a tiny corner of the world. It is so hot that if you do not keep drinking water you may faint out of dehydration because you are sweating profusely. Across the horizon, there is a hug spread of agricultural and non-agricultural fields. A researcher braves his way across this landscape, sitting on the backseat of a bike, and covering most of his face with a cloth as the wheels blast around a whirl of dust as the bike moves to reach to a remotely located village.

The village has hardly twenty households. It has two hand pumps which are a source of water for the village. Cattle are found in sables attached to households, and children play among and around them. The women of the village cover their faces, more so when strangers arrive at the village. The men plough the field, and trade food grains and vegetables in the nearest towns, for sustaining life in the village. The village has little or no access to electricity. For ages, life had been moving into darkness after dusk, kindled feebly by flickering candles or oil lamps.

The description is from the year 2017. The crazy researcher in this story, which is me, came all this way to take field notes and interviews of micro-entrepreneurs in this village, and others of this kind, who were working with a social enterprise, providing the off-grid areas access to basic electricity through solar micro-grids. This energy solution enables each household to use at least one LED light for some time at night. The bulbs shine amidst a huge space of darkness. They are an efficient replacement for candles or oil lamps. Some households have managed to get earlier versions of cell phones, which can be recharged with electricity, and can then be shared among households. The social enterprise works on the same model at many locations, and uses a mix of impact investments and grant money for making this change model work.

This is an example of how entrepreneurship can be the answer to many old problems that still plague our current world. It is true that scalability of socially oriented BOP ventures is an extremely difficult thing to achieve in an economy that is majorly market-driven. Nonetheless, we need to keep trying to harbour and nourish entrepreneurial mind-set that can make this world a better place. Entrepreneurship is about opportunity-identification and allocation of resources for opportunity-exploitation. As a researcher, I can say that social entrepreneurship is a form of entrepreneurship which is about identifying social change opportunities long ignored by market forces and addressing these opportunities in a way that is emancipatory for the marginalised. Being entrepreneurial does not imply being only for-profit. Entrepreneurial mind-set goes beyond the confines of economics; it uses economics for democratic purposes. There are men and women in this world who are dedicating their time and resources on socially entrepreneurial activities. As researchers we can explore these to contribute in developing and establishing conceptual clarity on the meaning of social entrepreneurship as emancipatory.