Education-Driven Entrepreneurship as an Economic Empowerment Model in India

Abstract

The National Education Policy 2020 (NEP-2020) has made efforts to change the face of India’s educational landscape by proposing entrepreneurship in the curriculum. The introduction of flexible credit frameworks, multidisciplinary knowledge-based learning, and experiential methodologies highlight the entrepreneurial prospects of the policy. Evidence from institutional initiatives under NEP-2020, such as Institution Innovation Councils, IDEA labs etc., shows that there is a 30 percent growth in enrolment into innovation programmes. In this regard, the Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector, comprising 57.7 million enterprises, can become one of the prime avenues to expand and transform the entrepreneurial prospect of NEP-2020 into economic activities. Therefore, we propose an integrated ‘Education-Entrepreneurship-Empowerment’ framework through this study, which can explain how cognitive transformation through educational reforms, institutional support mechanisms, and enterprise absorption capacity creates a virtuous loop to induce economic empowerment. Of course, misalignment between educational reform and entrepreneurial ecosystems risks the creation of skilled unemployment and low-productivity informality. Thus, we recommend establishment of co-managed District-level Education Enterprise Councils, mandatory placements of NEP graduates within their district MSMEs, and the launch of equity-driven strategies for strengthening education-enterprise coordination to foster economic empowerment in India.