Are Indians really equipped to be entrepreneurs?

I know that some will be really stumped by this question. After all- Ambanis, Mittal, Tata, NRN - all have come from India.

But the problem is that such people can be counted on fingers. Many articles/blogs have been written on this topic. Still I feel that nobody of us really touching the crux of the problem.

Am I an expert in this area? May be not, still i will try to pitch in with my 5 cents.

I will try to dive into the education system of India vis a vis Indian Parents.

Before that, here is a very good link on Entrepreneurship : http://www.getmotivation.com/goals/goals_grblairentrepreneur.html. I really like the portion where it says, "Entrepreneurship implies a willingness to risk challenging conventional wisdom and prevailing approaches."

If we look at our education system - this is exactly what we are lacking. Most of our education is towards imparting text book based education where challenging the conventional wisdom either does not happen or happens very randomly.

In India - failure is still considered bad (Well - it may be). Parents cant even think about seeing their wards failing. One has to trade in tried and tested waters. These days Computers/Software is hot and everybody has to follow in these footsteps. If someone has a good job, he/she should stick to the same job/profile. Resistance is faced from multiple directions if someone wants to do something which is not a norm.

If this is the ecosystem, how can we have more entrepreneurs? May be we need to talk about entrepreneurship from early in the education. Risk/Failure should be not be seen as something that will put one's career on a back burner. It should be seen as career enhancement. We need to talk about opportunities rather then failure.