Power of unreasonable people

The excitement about social entrepreneurship, naturally, has a shadow. It tends to view every social and economic dysfunction as a market distortion or failure that can be fixed by reconfiguring incentives. But there are conflicting interests which can only be addressed in the domain of rights through politics—the art of negotiating power relations. Thus, the potential of social entrepreneurship depends not so much on the “unreasonable people” themselves, but on enough of us ordinary, “reasonable” folk thinking and acting first as citizens and then as consumers and investors.

Rajni Bakshi, a freelance journalist, is the author of Bazaars, Conversations and Freedom soon to be published by Penguin, India. Comment at theirview@livemint.com