I begin this article as a critic of entrepreneurship – I am concerned about the implications that historiography has for reading into an entrepreneur's journey who lived through the events of growth. The enormity of the intellectual displacement which one experiences during the journey is difficult to comprehend. The constant sense of thought transitions and urgency to conquer related to the possibility of tasting success continue to occur every single day.
By the time the transitions are finally over, possibly zillion of ideas and methods have had crossed the newly created boundaries of growth trajectory – that everyone willfully define in their Business Plans, carrying with them memories of a kind of internal conflict that one fights with his/her own immediate surroundings, people in his/her life. The journey appears to be frighteningly commonplace with repeated occurrences and the displaced individual called entrepreneur will respond to calls of his/her journey and also that of his /her community – sometimes involving violence, threat to their survival, security for the future, and cultural continuity including finding a companion in life.
During this conflux of emotional servitude, most of the entrepreneurs succumb, thousands of them separated from their families and communities – resigning to the fate of failure, not able to handle the pressures of negative recognition. What qualifies as the 'rightful' success story is for this world to decide and sing praises about, but seldom do we celebrate failure. Something is fundamentally wrong with the particular construction of an entrepreneur’s identity in our country – one that shall not honor their experiences and I implore everyone to appreciate, for there are multitude of examples showcasing the concept of rejection agency in and through literary and historical narratives of the 'everyday' stories of entrepreneurship.
I am reminded of a Haryanvi Couplet which aptly showcases the struggle that an entrepreneur needs to go through – for a sense of identity and accomplishment:
Aur yeh beti jise tum saath
mere kankthiyon se dekhte ho
Beshumar haathon ne loota hai ise.
(And this daughter, whom you observe out of the corner of your eyes, sitting by my side - how many have looted her?)
The narrator of the poem represents the identity of his daughter as a possession to be looted. His rhetorical question, "How many have looted her" is embedded with a societal ideology that marks an entrepreneur's identities and their efforts as symbols of community honor and 'tradition' and makes them a subject of everyone’s judgment. Seldom does one see beyond the obvious – and understand there is a huge struggle to get to this stage – where one is at present. It takes more than learning about an entrepreneur’s journey, to truly appreciate their efforts.
- Abhijith Jayanthi
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