No one can create jobs like entrepreneurs can

Ask anybody about what ails the world most these days and the unanimous answer would be poverty. This is one of the biggest challenges the world faces today, along with unemployment and inequality..

Jim Clifton, CEO of Gallup Inc., an American research-based, global performance-management consulting company, put this very succinctly – “What the world needs is a good job!” He went on to add to this statement, after a global research study - “If countries fail at creating good jobs, their societies will fall apart. Countries, and more specifically cities, will experience suffering, instability, chaos, and eventually revolution.” Clifton goes on to say, that on a political level “the highest levels of leadership require mastery of a new task – job creation.”

Who are the real job creators in a country? We hear the Government promising us time after time about how they are going to create a million jobs. Yet this never happens in real life. We finally stop believing anything the Government says, because ultimately they do not and cannot create jobs. What they do is hire people to man state run projects, once the project is over the job get over too. It is not a sustainable model of job creation.

Needed entrepreneurial revolution

Long-term, sustainable jobs are created by entrepreneurs, not by politicians or bureaucrats. This is particularly so of the small and medium sector. What is needed today is an entrepreneurial revolution that will create jobs for oneself and for others and root out the problems of unemployment, poverty and inequality. The Government’s role should be to create a favorable environment and provide the basic infrastructure such that entrepreneurs can grow in numbers and strength. It should focus on providing affordable electricity, fuel, and other power sources, transportation infrastructure, including roadways and rail freight, and communication networks (ICT- Information and Communications Technology)  across the country.

For all these steps to work and be sustainable, apart from providing physical basics of infrastructure, there is a major need for a shift in the mindset of the Government and the people. Education and the legal system need to be aimed at creating job creators not job seekers. It needs to turn students into capable and efficient employers not employees. Every decision maker needs to focus on encouraging job creation. The importance should be on those who aspire, plan, take risks and make things happen and not on cardboard politicians.