Innovation and Progress: An Insight into the Indian Business Start-Ups and the Promotion of Scientific Temper for Socio-Economic Advancement

Abstract

The Constitution of India through its 42nd Amendment of 1976, incorporated "scientific temper' as one of the Fundamental Duties to every Indian citizen under Article 51 A (h). The first Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru mentions this term in his book "Discovery of India" where he characterised scientific temper as a mind-set to change or alter one's intuition in the light of evidences and not to accept anything which appears to be irrational or without proof. Our country has consistently put forth attempts to concede to the scientific temper, time and again and emphasised its significance. In 2013, the Science, Technology, and Innovation policy, developed by the Government of India pushed on the advancement of scientific temper amongst every citizen. However, it needs to go quite far to appropriately show this temperament while fostering the resolutions for achieving socio-economic goals of the country. Presently, it has been noticed that business ventures are intensely reliant upon scientific temper and this will be ultimately essential for the entrepreneurs to succeed. Thus, small and micro undertakings backed by competitive and state of the art technology will be the foundation for greater enterprises in the country, resulting in economic boom. All future businesses will be driven by science and technology and hence, it is called for addition of new avenues and enterprises, with changing time and further with scientific temper as its major ingredient. Start-ups can be considered as one such innovation that has been leading businesses growing by leaps and bounds. In India, the last decade emerged with great start-ups like CRED, Meesho, Swiggy, Zomato, Delhivery, Oyo and many more, making itself one of the most important start-up hubs in Asia and perhaps even in the world. The scientific temper in start-ups can further do wonders to India’s socio-economic growth in the long run. Hence, in this paper, the authors shall make an attempt to bring out the essence of scientific temper in bringing forth the technologically advanced start-ups in India and its capacity to form the basis of India's future in the global market, in terms of both technological advancements and entrepreneurship. The paper will also highlight the hindrances to its growth and suggest measures in contributing to the growth of start-up ecosystem in India.