Questioner (Pravin Gordhan): I’m sure there’re many budding entrepreneurs that are in this room.
What’s your advice to them, to start new businesses,
increase the levels of employment for the fifty percent unemployed youth that we have in our country
and grow economy, so that everybody can be more prosperous, one percent or not?
Sadhguru: There’re many things that need to be done, there’s no one particular thing.
But entrepreneurship is something that needs a certain psychological ecology of its own.
You will see, those youth who come from business families so effortlessly create businesses.
Those who don’t come from that ecosystem, they struggle and struggle and they can’t figure it out.
It’s not lack of intelligence, it is lack of experience and exposure.
So I would say one of the things is, the youth who’re willing to... wanting to do something
– I’m sure there’re many, many of them – if some kind of selection can be made
and they are exposed to enterprises in similar conditions.
Let’s say, in rural India, how people... any number of enterprise...
India is a land of enterprise because till 2000, only three percent of Indians were employed.
Ninety-seven percent were self-employed.
So, whether he may be selling five kilograms of vegetable, or fruit,
or maybe a very large billion dollar business, it doesn’t matter,
even he understands how to do business,
where he has to position himself, what he has to say, what he should not say.
These are simple things but till you’re in it, you don’t learn.
So, learning this experience, not necessarily from the public, but there are institutes
and institutions in India, which can teach entrepreneurship.
We ourselves in Isha are starting a Leadership Academy in Bangalore city, where youth from these countries
can come and get exposed to variety of enterprise.
I mean, the incredible thing right now in India is, the variety of enterprise is unbelievable.
When you go for so much enterprise, some of them will fail.
So it needs a net to hold them, so that they don’t fall back onto the street, or hang from a tree,
which is unfortunately happening here and there.
But it is time to do that because we’ve chosen market economy.
There is no other way than to unbridled enterprise.
Is it the best thing? I’m saying no.
But right now, to get people out of their poverty situations, to make sure everybody eats...
When I say everybody eats –
in India, it’s very true, I’m sure here also to some extent,
but - wherever I go, in any country, first thing I see is what’s the condition of the children.
I find, to my joy,
the condition of the South African children is way better than the conditions of the Indian children in rural India.
It’s a very good thing to see.
At least they’re better nourished, for whatever reason.
In India, this is true, that a child has to go to school and spend eight hours there,
but he has not eaten what he needs to eat to stay alert for these eight hours
and grasp whatever he’s supposed to grasp.
A farmer goes to his field and he’s not eaten what he should eat to do that hard task of, you know, farming.
Or a pregnant woman has not eaten what she should eat to produce a lively, healthy child.
These are terrible things.
But these terrible things are happening because populations are large
and we’re not able to create a social net.
So this is why this corporate social responsibility was brought in.
But people find ways to use this money in so many different ways, that’s another matter.
But social net has to happen.
But the danger of social nets is always about destroying the work culture and breeding lethargy.
This is something the administrators have to carefully...
I would say, it needs a certain level of heartlessness, where tough decisions have to be made.
People are suffering but still you make tough decisions, so that long-term it works out well for you,
that today you start doling out food to everybody, you will see…
If you want to destroy a nation, you don’t have to bomb it,
you just destroy its work culture, it’s finished (Applause).