Entrepreneurship is key for job creation, but the mistake most States were making is mixing it with skill development, said S. Krishnan, Principal Secretary to Housing and Urban Development Department, Government of Tamil Nadu.
“There are 1.5 lakh engineering seats filled every year in Tamil Nadu and even if 1% of those graduates turn entrepreneurs, the impact would be huge. The focus has been placement and helping them get jobs now,” he said, speaking at a panel discussion on public-private partnerships to drive innovation and entrepreneurship at IIT-Madras.
We need to separate the focus between entrepreneurship and skill development and both are important elements in job creation, Mr. Krishnan said.
He also pointed out that one of the things that has worked well for Tamil Nadu government is the innovation initiative.
“We changed the way the programme is operated. Earlier, we use to allot funds to each department for new initiatives. However, we found that the department used it only for routine things like buying computers. So, we made the departments bid based on new ideas for funds,” Mr. Krishnan pointed out.
He said that the initiative has received 1,000 proposals and only 200 have been cleared in the last three years.
Some of them included unmanned aerial vehicles by Anna University and a research project by Tangedco for improving the efficiency of transformers and saving cost.
