Rural entrepreneurship - A case of khadi & village industries of India

India lives in villages. Its 75% population lives in villages and 80% of its rural population is earning its livelihood from agriculture and allied activities. The land cannot absorb this much pressure for long period. Urban cities are already concentrated with industrialization and this makes growth of rural entrepreneurship more essential. Rural industries are labour-intensive, thus, providing a clear answer to the growing problem of unemployment. Development of rural industries through rural entrepreneurship has high scope of employment generation. The need of the hour is to develop rural entrepreneurship because this is the most viable solution of various problems like unemployment, pollution and concentration of industries in cities, lack of awareness in rural youth etc. Rural industries include traditional sector and modern sector. Former consists of Khadi & village industries, handlooms, sericulture, handicrafts and coir while the latter include powerlooms and SSIs. In this paper, a case of Khadi & Village Industries is taken and problems of rural entrepreneurship are discussed. Although the government is taking supportive measures to improve village industries during Five-Year Plans and Annual Plans by allocating a large outlay to these industries, but due to various problems like infrastructural problems, non- supportive attitude of financial institutions, low quality products, use of obsolete technology etc. rural industries are still lagging behind and some of them are under a threat of extinction as well. Unless measures are taken to modernize the rural industry, it will die out sooner or later due to increasing competition from the urban industries.