Extending management education to rural entrepreneurs of msme units in India: A strategic tool for sustainable development

The Micro, Small & Medium Enterprise [MSME] sector in India offers some unique benefits like high employment generation capacity, significant contribution to the GDP and foreign exchange earnings, removing regional imbalances in industrialization, catering to markets inaccessible to or ignored by large industries and being sources of local supply and service providers to large business houses. MSME units in India are predominantly proprietary in constitution and as such is heavily dependent on the limited and inadequate managerial expertise of the proprietor. Thus, lack of adequate managerial expertise remains a significant deterrent for the development of MSMEs in India. This paper aims to discuss the need of and to suggest a methodology for extending management education in a modified structure, content and pedagogy to the MSME entrepreneurs, both existing and potential, specially to those of rural India, to enable them to become more adaptable to the increasingly competitive and unpredictable business scenario. This, in turn, would be a strategic driver to consolidate the economic development and social development, two of the three determinants of sustainable development in India.