Entrepreneurship: Waning altruism and missing romanticism

It's passion which is found to be rare in our context where paradoxically almost everyone conscious wants to become an entrepreneur. Most people, in business in particular, talk about entrepreneurship, reckoning each of themselves to be nothing less than a person within that bracket. Others, too, follow the suit.
This attitude, coming from dominant global and national trends, involves a fashionable concept, instilled in the minds of imitators by the seniors and teachers of business studies. Thus, many a young graduate and business entrant dreams of becoming the likes of Steve Jobs, probably not Jack Ma.
The Bangladesh trend, however, exposes more naivety of replication than originality of thinking as the to-be entrepreneurs can hardly reconcile themselves with 'madness of risk-taking' required for undertaking a new venture without bothering about success in advance. The inspiration of an individual to satisfy the self with sublime accomplishments and his/her dedication to the people with emotional attachment are not seen in most of our enterprises and social activities.
Where are we then living in business history for taking any individualistic or collective efforts to aim a goal?
It was in 1990-1991, a turning point in history, when the foundation of the current economic order was laid. Internationally the years of the command economy of socialism that challenged capitalism came to an end and a new wave of democracy with the welfare economy began.
At home, Mr. M Saifur Rahman, Finance Minister of the then BNP administration, led the reform programmes to see a private sector-led growth in the subsequent years and decades. The government, which was elected through participatory ballot after the fall of autocracy in 1990, was under constant moral pressure from political and civic forces to give parliamentary democracy an institutional shape.
That journey was the result of the movement - political and intellectual - by a whole generation of educated youths in the 1980s, who believed that the world could be changed for betterment of peoples. The ideological motivation for changing the world -be it for democracy, communism or any egalitarian system - is so sharp that failure to complete a mission was considered only the failure of the individual leaders or strategists, not of the philosophy. The generation of the late 1980s and early 1990s was perhaps the last one of bearing ideal dreams.
The representatives of that generation were the catalysts for change, a change that served better the purpose of many others. The term entrepreneur was not applicable for those 'unsung heroes', since they didn't own business entities although it was their sacrifice that created the platform for building entrepreneurship in the subsequent decades. In fact, the trend set in 1991 has come to a distorted level of fruition today, doling out benefits to the selected clients who have polluted the atmosphere by adopting corrupt means. It's the symptom of a crisis which leads to breakdown of a system and heralding of a new era.
Historians and social thinkers tend to define the characteristics of a certain period of time and they would judge if the second decade of the 21st century would be marked by any shift for Bangladesh from one phase of governance and market economy to another. In our living memory, the 1960s could be called such a critical time.
In August 1963, Martin Luther King's "I had a dream" speech electrified a whole generation, wrote Pakistani-born political thinker Tariq Ali who recalling his days at Oxford added: "Some of my university friends were in revolt against everything: professors, examinations, institutions, and life itself. They pursued the world, seeking it out only to reject it out of hand."
US scholar Noam Chomsky thought the activism of the 1960s had 'a very definite civilising effect' on society in all kinds of ways. "It's kind of interesting and sick that the intellectual culture called the 1960s, "time of troubles," a dangerous period in which a lot of harm was done to the society," he said in a recent interview with two other professors in Massachusetts.
Our negation of the Pakistani military dictatorship in the 1960s and dream of asserting the right to self-determination resulted in the birth of Bangladesh in 1971. And mainly only one generation which captured the leadership in almost all sectors is still at the helm, leaving hardly any room for the next one to be groomed for leadership. Old, frustrated and morally downgraded, the powerful leaders of the single generation are set to hand over - today or tomorrow -what may turn out to be a dangerous legacy to the next generation.
A transition towards positive changes that some people dream of and have talked about for quite a number of years has so far eluded the Bangladesh polity. Functional institutions that could have supported flourishing of talents have not been built rather than ensuring their ruining over the years; we are not blessed either with too many individuals in leadership position, who are enlightened with ideas and wisdom, passionate about work and devoted to services to humanity.
In such a largely sterilised society, entrepreneurship has lost its true meaning and spirit. If making money is the only motto of life, everyone in such activities should then be regarded as an entrepreneur. Professor Muhammad Yunus is the one who couldn't accept it and that's why he has floated the idea of social business, which is being appreciated everywhere except his homeland. Moreover, successes of a few business houses and names like Sir Fazle Hasan Abed have been largely overshadowed by the stories of evil elements in society.
A class of businesspeople and moneyed men has emerged in the country, taking the advantage of the incentives introduced in the 1990s and also the rent-seeking system nurtured over the years. But youths, especially the ones outside the realm of power and privilege, are not being promoted for joining the bandwagon of global and national entrepreneurs. Young people, who are proven change-makers that entrepreneurs are supposed to be, are not welcome to the world of the coteries.
There are, of course, people including youngsters with entrepreneurial zeal, They, however, suffer for lack of appreciation from the society and the state. This country does not also have the arrangement for giving honourable exit to the ones who would fail in their ventures. Despite being more inter-dependent in a globalised system, we have come to a point where sheer selfishness dominates our acts devoid of collective interests, something which cannot be the business of a genuine entrepreneur.

The writer is Executive Editor at ICE Business Times.
 khawaza@gmail.com.