Drivers of Functioning or Discontinuation of Small-Scale Agri Entrepreneurship in Rural India

Abstract

Youth in rural India have been witnessing a paradoxical situation of unemployment on one hand and untapped potential for transforming agriculture to agribusiness on the other. Realizing this, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) implemented the “Attracting and Retaining Youth in Agriculture (ARYA)” project since 2016-17. The impact of the project on the extent of livelihood was assessed by comparing ‘functional’ and ‘discontinued’ enterprises with primary data from 1033 units, spread across 25 states of the country. The study attempted to know whether functioning or discontinuation was anything to do with the choice of an enterprise or was it influenced by other factors. Nine types of activities were subjected to economic performance analysis. Despite passing through COVID pandemic, the functional units provided significantly higher quanta of income and employment compared to discontinued enterprises. Composite entrepreneurial factor index, a measure of entrepreneurial ability, was subjected to test the hypothesis that entrepreneurial competencies, age, education, landholding, livelihood-capital status and utilization of information-sources influence the performance of small-scale agri enterprises.