Entrepreneurship and the informal sector

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Some lessons from India

Anjula Gurtoo and Colin C. Williams

Abstract:

This paper critically evaluates the popular structuralist representationof informal workers as marginalized populations who work as dependent employees out of economic necessity and as a last resort. Reporting on an empirical survey of 1,518 informal workers in India, it reveals not only that a large proportion work on their own account asinformal entrepreneurs, but also that not all do such work purely out of economic necessity and in the absence of alternative means of livelihood.The paper concludes by calling for a wider recognition of the opportunity-driven entrepreneurial endeavour of many working in the informal sector.

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