55K young Punjab entrepreneurs await Rs 11 cr ‘seed money’

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, September 1

The Business Blaster project, initiated by the Education Department in nine districts in Phase 1 (November 2022) before being expanded to all districts of Punjab, has failed to achieve the desired results. Reason? The seed money amounting to about Rs 11 crore is yet to be provided to the 55,000 students selected under the project from government schools across the state.

Students’ take

• Two students of a local school, who got selected in the first phase, said two teams were selected from their school — one had created an energy drink while the other came up with an idea to print T-shirts with images of cartoon characters, sportspersons.
• “The government was providing just Rs 2,000 per student. For the energy drink, a certificate had to be taken, for which ~50,000 had to be paid! And for T-shirts, we could not afford a printing machine,” said one of the students. “We come from modest backgrounds. The ideas fizzled out.”
• DEO Dimple Madan said the government would start providing the seed money to the students as soon as the department gets the directions.

Purpose of the project

•  Class 11 students were to be provided seed money of Rs 2,000 to start a business, the idea being to develop young entrepreneurs. Originally, the Business Blasters entrepreneurship programme was launched by the AAP-run Delhi Government in 2021. In Punjab, it was launched as a pilot project in November 2022.

Teachers say even after innovative ideas and videos were submitted by students after October last year, no seed money has been released. Some students who had participated with their ideas had either left or changed schools, teachers say.

Daljit Singh Samrala, president of the Democratic Teachers Union, spoke about the anomalies inherent in the project. “The students had floated ideas, the best were sent to the department. On which criteria they were selected, even we have no idea,” he said. “The students didn’t get a penny and are a disappointed lot.”

“The department had asked teachers to provide training to students on avenues in business,” he said. “Being an English teacher, how can I train the students about business?”

The project was launched in nine districts initially — Ropar, Amritsar, Mohali, Ludhiana, Patiala, Hoshiarpur, Jalandhar, Ferozepur and Sangrur — and 11,000 students from 32 government schools had participated in it. Of these, 3,032 students were selected and seed money was given to them. Later, the project was expanded to all over the state and 55,000 students were picked up on the basis of the ideas they had floated. However, no seed money was given to them.

However, Jyoti Soni, coordinator of Young Entrepreneur Scheme, said the money was transferred into the accounts of District Education Officers (DEOs) in the districts, and after the credentials of the students are verified, it would be given to them. Soni said Rs 11 crore would be disbursed among 55,000 students in the first week of September.

“We have now decided to complete the project in two years. In the first year, the students will make the projects and submit them and in the next year, seed money will be given,” she said.

Explaining the selection criteria, Soni said students were picked up on the basis of the idea floated by them, evaluation by teachers, team spirit, and market survey, etc.

However, an official dealing with the project in Ludhiana said: “We do not know the exact criteria.” He informed that 1,000 students were selected from one particular school in Ludhiana, while not even single child could make it from many other schools.

In Ludhiana district, 6,232 students were selected from 18,000 participants.