Just to add on to the point made previously by rj, we must look at our historical context for the lack of entrepreneurship in a big way, but before that we must examine the fact that is there really a lack of entrepreneurship in India. I live in the western part of the country and you see the level of entrepreneurship in Rajasthan and Gujarat, esp in the manufacturing and trade sectors, you go down south, you see IT companies in huge numbers.......... I am not very aware of the other three regions, but we as a people are known to be resilient and street-wise money smart people................coming to the immediate question, we can break up our history into the pre-colonization phase, the colonization phase and the post-colonization or independent india phase. During the pre-colonization phase, India was a globally reputed culture for its products and a large number of small artisans made a variety of products which were carried by merchants across the globe........however due to the cast system, there must have been restrictions on the entrepreneuial capability of people from the lower castes due to social stigma and fear of reprisal................coming to the colonization phase, here we see our entrepreneurship capabilities both being crushed and coming out in full bloom................in general across the nation, manufacturing was encouraged by the british to facilitate exports of finished goods at cheap rates, this spurred many families to enter into manufacturing in this phase, including famous names like birlas, goenkas, grasims, arvind mills etc............but at the grassroot level, there was a deterent to entrepreneurship as this was a transitory phase and due to the high level of taxes and restrictions, people could not explore areas of their choice but were forced towards some industries which were beneficial to the british, like textiles...........this phase was where our grand parents lived in and hence they saw the government servants living a decent life, more importantly respectfull life in the eyes of the society...........this image lingered on and got further entrenched during the first 40 years of our independence inspite of efforts by the government to encourage SME's................the phase of the emergency further crippled the green shoots of entrepreneurship that were starting to emerge.............in the way of huge taxes and license raj..........it was only post-liberalization that there has been a gradual reduction of restrictions to start one's own business...............and this phase of reduction of restrictions still continues and we should hopefully see the next generation much more entrepreneurial in their attitude due to the much more open environment their parents have lived in.