Status and social value attached to entrepreneurship

entrepreneurship…this socialization took place at home, at the place of education and other spheres of interaction’. Status and social value attached
to entrepreneurship also influence motivations, supra note 2 as above.
40
For an overview on various business communities in India in various time periods, see for example, Dwijendra Tripathy (ed.) ‘Business Communities
of India: A Historical Perspective’, 1984, supra note 13 as above; see also, Thomas A. Timberg, ‘The Marwaris: From Traders to Industrialists’, 1978,
supra note 8 as above on the Marwari business community; Claude Markovits, ‘The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750-1947: Traders of Sind from
Bukhara to Panama’, Mario Rutten, ‘Farms and Factories: Social Profiles of Large Farmers and Rural Industrialists in Western India’; the role of various
communities such as the Parsis, Jain merchants, Mahajans, Gujaratis, business communities in Punjab, Jews, Chettiyars etc. is a fascinating subject
of study; see also Harish Damodaran (forthcoming), ‘India’s New Capitalists’ on the sociology and history of some of India’s business communities
since independence. The use of the term community is in its generic sociological sense, to refer to a social group, typically endogamous, to which are
connected certain ‘stereotypes, traditions, occupational directions, attitudes and social positions…a community may be separated internally by caste,
ritual, regional or economic differences’, see for example Timberg at page 5; see also Chapter 1 of this report.
41
Melvin M. Weber, ‘Towards a Definition of Interest Community’, in P. Worsely (ed.) ‘ Modern Sociology: Introductory Readings’ (1972), quoted in Timberg
at page 11.
42
See Tripathy, supra note 13 as above, at page 18.
Socio-cultural factors
such as social norms,
family values, networks
and social value of
entrepreneurship, play a
key role in nurturing the
entrepreneurial ecosystem.
A historical and
sociological understanding
of certain communities
in India, which have
been traditionally
engaged in business,
confirms the role of social
factors that encourage
Entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship in India 22
interest was tallied and settled once a year, with total borrowing
offset by total lending.’
43

Infrastructural support: Traditional networks assure infrastructural
support such as access to storage facilities for goods along trade
routes, remittance facilities and arrangements for accommodation. 44
Thomas Timberg, for example, cites how G.D. Birla’s grandfather,
Shiv Narain, stayed in a cooperative ‘ basa ’ (collective mess) in then
Bombay (now Mumbai) when he first arrived from his village of
Pilani in the 1860s. 45

Socialization: The community encourages socialization into
Entrepreneurship, the inculcation of commercial morality (respecting
the contract, making ethical profits etc), notions of thrift as well as
training opportunities, such as apprenticeships to learn techniques
of business. Mechanisms for ‘cushioning of conflict’ and division of
labour and authority also develop through the joint family system
and social networks.