[Reader-list] STORIES OF NEW ENTREPRENEURSHIP

[prasad shetty]

Hello everybody,
This is my first posting to the Sarai Reader List for the independent fellowship programme. I am Prasad, an architect from Mumbai specialsed in Urban Management and work on several urban issues from heritage to garbage! I work as an independent consultant, used to teach, work for an organisation called CRIT (www.crit.org.in) etc..etc..etc..My recent interests have been on entrepreneurship in the city and mapping them through gossip. Please find below the brief research proposal.

  
STORIES OF NEW ENTREPRENEURSHIP 

Contemporary reconfigurations of the production pattern are most evident when one finds classified planning documents of the government or cheques of a multinational bank being produced in a neighbourhood slum. While such examples raise questions on government, multinational, and the informal sector, they foreground a significant characteristic of the contemporary urban condition – the new entrepreneurship that is rapidly growing in the city. 

The rising global demand for cheaper material and labour markets overlapped with the state’s ambition to take advantage of such demands seem to have significantly contributed towards the new configurations in the production pattern, which began with a systematic dismantling of the formal industry and protected labour. The owning of the means of production no longer remains centralised with a single industry owner. Commodity production has left the assembly line within a single factory space and shifted to multiple production units located around the globe. The shift in the ownership of the means of production has de-centralised competition. All links of the classical assembly line have been opened up for a new competition. Large industries no longer seem to compete for production, but instead, labourers compete with each other in this magnanimous competition. This competition has given birth to, and nurtured, the agents of cheap production. Their job is to organise material and labour and give the cheapest bid. The reconfiguration of production has effectively changed the classical capitalist - proletariat equation, thus making the city - a city of entrepreneur agents. 

On the other hand, large industries have engaged themselves in another kind of competition – for the selling of their products. These aggressive attempts in reaching the markets have caused consumption patterns to change, thus forcing an importance of “quality”. Round the clock services, flexible stalks for toothbrushes, cameras with mobile phones etc. are all representative of this “quality” drive which has produced the second set of agents of  quality consumption. It is easy to find a housekeeping consultant, a computer maintenance agency, an interior consultant etc. in the city. The demand has moreover created a new type of value for commodities generating and manipulating an urban consciousness that searches for environmental sustainability, appropriate aesthetics and a stress-free comfortable life. Shops selling organic goods, eco-friendly products, health food consultants, beauty parlours, highly equipped gymnasiums, advertisements for health equipments, furniture and fashion boutiques etc have become a part of our contemporary memory. 

One of the chief characteristics of the agents involved in production and selling is their network with other actors of the society, who not only facilitate resources, but also help to fetch markets. The requirement to establish and nourish this network has created the third type of agents of facility providers and crises traders. The cable television operators, photocopy agencies, quick film developing and printing shops, neighbourhood computer accessories shop, computer and Internet providers, mobile phone agents are all agents who facilitate resources. These agents not only provide facilities, but more appropriately, trade crises that get generated on account of increasing informality. The crises trading is realised more acutely in the case of Chartered Accountants keeping accounts to save taxes, or informal financers providing instant funds without collaterals. The agents who deal with crises specialise in solving the problems that contemporary landscapes have created.

The new landscape of competition has an inherent requirement of people with high skill and capacity. The last sets of agents are the knowledge brokers who deal with these issues. Institutes training people in computer handling, public speaking, English language, competitive examinations along with counselling centres for job and education are examples of these agents. The most recent type of knowledge brokerage is in developmental research. One can find several professionals involved in researching on urban environments. The incapacity of the governmental agencies and the new need for communities towards research are some of the issues these knowledge brokers take advantage of. 

The experiences in Urban Development has led me to understand that conventional planning in the city of Mumbai, by mainstream agencies in the public and private sector have yet to grasp the conditions that are provided by the new economy. The conventional planning in the city still largely, either remains a hangover of industrial suburban planning that seeks to control population growth and provide adequate services; or has entered into a strange managerial mode prompted by the international donor agencies that seek to develop institutional and financial abstractions for addressing the city problems. A more thorough understanding in the shift of economy, I believe, would not only radically change the agenda and processes of planning in the city, but also would articulate new positions other than the traditional public and private sector, or a dubious NGO sector. This project proposal seeks to initiate such an understanding of the new economy, where I argue that the new city is a city of entrepreneur agents and to understand the new city, we need to understand the entrepreneurship of these agents. Only then would we be able to comprehend the new structure of the contemporary metropolis. The project proposes to develop a sketch of the new structure of the contemporary metropolis. I have identified four sets of agents and their entrepreneurship that is significantly shaping the landscapes of the new economy. The proposed project for the independent fellowship aims at examining the nature of this new entrepreneurship. The new entrepreneurship has a new history, new requirements, new structures and new methods of operating and perhaps requires new methods for conceptualisation, which need to move beyond the convenient bracket of “Small and Medium Enterprises” that rely on hard data like initial capital, type and quantity of production, number of employees, square meter area for operation, annual turnover, amount of water and electricity, etc. The new method needs to perhaps investigate into many more soft areas like conditions of establishment and entry point into the enterprise, methods of acquiring finances and other resources, security of the entrepreneur, conditions and value of the labour, type of networks, strategies and tactics for sustenance, types of negotiations, etc. to be able to grasp the details of the new economy. The project proposes to undertake a detailed documentation of forty such cases of entrepreneurships in Mumbai City. 



Prasad Shetty
Residence: 501, Marigold, Opposite Shakti Motors, New Link Road, Malad (W),
Mumbai 400 064 INDIA
Phone: +91-9820912744
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050123/931b58bb/attachment.html