Role of Women Entrepreneurs in Agricultural Development: Problems and Prospects
Dr. C.S Arneja and Gaganpreet Kaur
Dept. of Extension Education
Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana.
ABSTRACT
The emergence of entrepreneurs in agriculture and allied activities can propel our rural population into self sustaining individuals, who in turn can catalyze the development of economy. The concepts of entrepreneur and entrepreneurship have been frequently applied to industrial sector. Agriculture, on the other hand, has largely been viewed as non-entrepreneurial traditional activity. For rural folk it is a way for life. Hence farmers were never visualized as business operators and farming as an enterprise. Not much has been developed to farmers into rational business, sensing individuals or in other words ‘entrepreneurs’. The genesis of entrepreneurship in agriculture and allied activities ,is quite recent. It is now being widely accepted that increase in production, productivity, of terms, farm diversification, innovation and development of farmers into self sustaining individuals follow inoculation of the entrepreneurial qualities among the farmers. Factors like liberalization of the economy have created the right ambience for growth of entrepreneurs in agriculture. It is estimated that presently women entrepreneurs comprise about 10% of the total entrepreneurs in India. The term “Women Entrepreneurship” mean, an act of business ownership and business creation that empowers women economically, increases their economic strength as well as position in society. Hence women-entrepreneurs have been making a considerable impact in all most all the segments of the economy which is more than 25 percent of all kinds of business .In India “Entrepreneurship” is very limited amongst women especially in the formal sector, which is less than 5 percent of all the business. The
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