Micro-enterprise Promotion: Perception of Rural Youths

The present study was undertaken in Nayagarh district of Orissa with a randomized sample of 120 youths. A structured interview schedule and group discussion was used for interviewing the respondents. The focus was on six areas like; socio-economic profile of the sample, entrepreneurial characteristics, understanding micro-enterprise, personal traits, existing micro-enterprises in the study locality and field level problems. The results reveal that majority of the sample youths (33.33%) were matriculates having low level family resource base (57.50%). They were lacking certain traits of entrepreneurship like creativity, ability to identify opportunity, self-confidence and achievement orientation which should be enhanced. The focus group discussion found that the level of understanding of the sample youths towards micro-enterprises was high in case of economic activity and market assessment. The gap analysis of personal traits in relation to micro-enterprise indicated the highest gap in competitiveness (53.00%) while lowest in adaptability (19.65%). In study area, mushroom cultivation and poultry rearing were identified as dominant micro-enterprises for income generation. The youths faced the major problems like market link (I) followed by salesmanship (II), credit availability (III) and quality production (IV) which needs proper training with incentives to encourage them for adopting micro-enterprises to create employment opportunity in addition to economic development.