Factors Contributing the Success of Rural Entrepreneurs in Hilly Areas: An Insight from Garo Hills, Meghalaya

It is now an established fact that entrepreneurship has the economic force towards rural development. Lately rural development and entrepreneurship are strongly associated by the policy makers. Rural entrepreneurship is now seen as the strategic driver of rural development. Rural areas of the countries especially hilly areas offer enough resources (both agro-based and non-agrobased) for the development of entrepreneurship. Most importantly, a rural entrepreneur lives in the rural areas and thus helps in the formation of local wealth. Since economic goals of rural entrepreneur and social goals of rural development are interconnected, entrepreneurship in rural areas is usually community-based and has large impact on rural community. Under this situation, in any project, the selection of potential entrepreneur becomes a crucial factor in order to ensure entrepreneurial success. An analysis of the empirical literatures regarding the characteristics of entrepreneurs, establishes direct relationship between the need for achievement, locus of control and risk taking propensity with success in most cases. There are many other factors including need for dominance, passion for work, and time preference. Apart from these psychological factors, the demographic characteristics, infrastructural facility and institutional support also play a crucial role in decision related to entrepreneurship in rural area especially in hilly regions like West Garo Hills of Meghalaya. The background factors of the entrepreneurs also cannot be ignored. This paper attempts to investigate the factors that determine entrepreneurial selection and success in rural hilly areas by studying the entrepreneurs in the IFAD project villages of the district. Also an effort was made to find out the correlation between the variables and relations between those variables and sales (income from enterprise) to find out factors having significant impact on entrepreneurial success in rural hilly areas.