Madhusudan_Das

His Life and Achievements 177
to bear in mind that this aspect of social economics can not be
described by means of quantification alone, but it is quite
necessary to take into consider many other factors of a qualitative
kind. There is no adequate arithmetical answer to the question :
how successful from the point of view of society, is an
entrereneur?
How then can the entrepreneurial personalty of Mr. Das can be
explained ? Inheritance, ballads of childhood, learning during
adolescence, health, dynamic interaction with the environment, impact
of the social environment have all their contributions. But the answer can
only be complete if we view the whole game as 'Role' playing. That is the
linking of the society and the individual in a particular situation: society
as the receptacle of patterned expectations for the individual to fulfill
and the individual as an organization of personality with respect to
differentiated functions or positions in a social group. Thus by "viewing
individual situalions in terms of plurality of roles and plurality of
sanctions, we arc able to give systematic context to the problems of
variation in role performance by the entrepreneurs, their success and
their innovations." 22 Mr. Das was a national leader, a great political
worker for the unification of the State, a social reformer, an educationist,
a legislator, a leading advocate, an intellectual and an explorer of
industrial organizations. Such a grandiose combination of 'Roles' he played
to pull up by strings the motherland in all directions should make one
aware the high degree of dedication he made; nonetheless he ever remains
the 'Schumpeterian' entrepreneur. He destroyed the cake of custom, he
defeated the spirit of traditionalism, he plunged in to the unknown and
placed first in the land new industrial organization, new method of
production, new avenues for marketing and new directions in thinking in
economic fields. "The carrying out of new combinations we call
'enterprise'; the individuals whose function is to carry them out we call
'entrepreneurs'. The ordinary characterisation of the entrepreneur type by
such expressions as 'initiative', 'authority' or 'farsight' points entirely in
our direction'. 23
III
Let us finally estimate the extent to which this entrepreneur
succeeded as a prime mover of a modern economy in his mother land i.e.,
at the macro-level. It was very unfortunate that a golden chance was
allowed to slip away in this regard. He identified more with political and