Empowerment of Specially Abled People in the Field of Entrepreneurship

Abstract

The term Specially Abled Entrepreneur (SAE) includes entrepreneurs who are physically challenged. This study elaborates on the number of restrictions faced by specially abled entrepreneurs and how they can be empowered to overcome their difficulties. A specially abled person s day to day personal activities do not occur systematically and it is more challenging while being an entrepreneur. According to Albrecht (1997) The civility of a country is judged by how it treats its children, its persons with disabilities and its poor and elderly citizens. It is high time the government takes some steps immediately to serve specially abled people at their doorsteps. They can be provided with awareness of various schemes applicable to them, training programs, medical support and many more empathetic components. newlineEven though the government had introduced many schemes for the specially abled entrepreneurs at various periods of time, it is not properly utilized due to communication gap and lack of awareness. Most of the specially abled people do not receive proper support from their families and society at large. They are often looked upon as a curse of God and burden to their families. The employment opportunities for specially abled people in India doesn t cater even to half of the specially abled population. Apart from this there are many other problems encountered by specially abled entrepreneurs. For instance, regarding employment the specially abled people are not able to approach government offices that are meant to help them. Even if they approach such offices they are not provided with courteous guidance. This kind of situation makes them to loose their confidence and it leads to uncertainty in them. Despite having separate offices/service providers to clarify their queries regarding funding and development programmes that are provided by the government they are unable to make the best use of it. This as a result forces specially abled entrepreneurs to compete with normal entrepreneurs or isolate themselves