Social enterprises in Indian agricultural sector

Abstract

India is the seventh-largest country in the world by area but is the second largest in terms of land under agricultural use. Nearly 50% of India’s workforce is employed on these 179.9 million hectares of land Along with its allied sectors, agriculture accounts for 14% of India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 11% of the country’s total exports. ii India is the world’s largest producer of many fruits and vegetables, milk, major prices, millets, and fibre crops such as jute. It is also the second largest producer of rice and wheat. However, this is only half the picture. The agriculture sector’s contribution to India’s GDP has more than halved in the last two decades. Its rate of growth has also been considerably behind other sectors of the economy. These two metrics are fair indicators of the diminishing focus of the government on Agriculture. This diminishing focus is a major cause for concern for India. The agriculture sector in India is far from perfect and is faced with innumerable problems and challenges which can only be addressed by active government intervention in the form of policies and investments in long term infrastructure and assets. Agricultural yield rates in India are some of the worst in the world. Indian farmers are some of the poorest in the world and work on extremely small landholdings which makes farming uneconomical for them. They face challenges in terms of access to agricultural inputs, farming equipment, working capital, weather forecasts, irrigation and fair markets. While the government has tried to mitigate these problems through subsidies, various rural welfare schemes like NREGA and market regulation bodies like Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC), its efforts leave a lot to be desired. It is in these areas where markets fail and the government’s presence is inadequate, a new form of organizations has emerged to improve the life of the Indian farmer. A social enterprise is an organization that uses sound business rationale and innovation to improve community well-being than simply pursuing commercial interests. For social enterprises, the former is the end and the latter an unexpected benefit or the means for sustaining the end. Social enterprises come in various forms: Cooperatives, Producer Companies, For-profit and Not-for-profit Organizations and socially conscious commercial organizations.