Vol. 11, Special Issue 3 (2022)

Author(s):
Ushia Rai, Shrabantika Ghosh, Birat Rai, Litan Das and Sabita Mondal

Abstract:
India is a nation of youth and an agriculture based country hence there is a vast potential for agribusiness. The country has one of the largest agricultural education system. The state of West Bengal consists of two Agriculture universities and number of other general universities. Every year huge number of students complete their graduation and opt for various jobs or higher education. Many remain unemployed, though there is a huge scope for empowerment of graduates both agriculture and general through agriculture and allied enterprises but negligible number of them are interested in entrepreneurship or self-employment. The study aims to assess the attitude of the graduates both agriculture and general towards agriculture entrepreneurship and self -employment so that, the students can be motivated to become self- employed rather than employment seeker. The study has also analyzed the association between various independent variables and the attitude of the graduate towards agriculture entrepreneurship. Total 200 respondents were selected for the study.100 were agriculture graduates and rest 100 were general graduates. The questionnaire in google format was sent to them electronically. The data thus collected were finally analysed with the help of various statistical tools used like frequency, percentage, mean, S.D and coefficient of correlation. It has been found that various independent variables have significant relationship with the attitude of the graduates towards entrepreneurship and self-employment like gender, residential area, father’s education, father’s occupation, self-confidence, innovativeness, risk taking ability, achievement motivation and market orientation. The study also states that agriculture graduates had shown moderately favourable to high attitude towards entrepreneurship however, general graduates had shown low to moderately favourable attitude towards entrepreneurship. It has been expressed by the agricultural graduates that entrepreneurship includes risk, requires leadership quality, communication skill and more capital infusion whereas, general graduates had emphasised more on past experience or exposure and convincing skill along with the thought that it includes risky activities and communication skill. Hence, it is recommended that the graduates must be exposed more to skill oriented programme, exposure visits as well as managerial training to develop confidence, leadership quality and communication skill. They should be made aware of different government schemes meant for encouraging entrepreneurship among youth along with different credit schemes available.