FIVE CRITICAL PILLARS OF INDIA’S SKILL STORY

October 10, 2023

Look carefully at your child’s innocence, Intelligence and dedication. What future(say year2030) will he/she have? bright or gloomy? We are shaped by our self determination,goals,skills, opportunities we get and how favourable or unfavourable is the external business and social environment in which we live and work. The future of the children will be shaped by key critical business and social environment decisions which our government should take now. Absence of such decisions will create a gloomy and bleak future for our children. One such critical decision before government is building skills for youth for employability .Success or failure of India skill story depends on five critical pillars

1-JOB CREATION(EMPLOYEMENT GENERATIONS)

2-SKILLS STANDARDS .

3-SCALE

4-RESPECT FOR SKILLED WORKERS

5-INCLUSIVENESS

JOB CREATION

56% of Indians(68 crore) today are less than 25 years of age. They will start seeking jobs .The nation needs to create 260 to 280 lakh jobs every year. During the last five years India could create only 22 lakh jobs per year.(ie we are only on 10% of our most critical goal).We need to create labour intensive jobs in agro processing, rural infrastructural development ,healthcare ,manufacturing and hospitality Creating a skilled workforce without labour intensive job creation is most dangerous for the Indian society.

SKILLS STANDARDS

We need to be world-class globally deployable professionals, therefore it is essential our occupational standards, course curriculum and faculty is amongst the best in the world .Therefore it is imperative we create cadre of highly trained and motivated faculty and curriculum experts.

SCALE

We need industry /sector specific institutions each with rural presence, expertise and robust processes and capability to skill 08to10 lakh youth per year across India in sectors like manufacturing, healthcare, hospitality agriculture, construction, automobile, textile ,electronics etc .

RESPECT FOR SKILLED WORKERS

India’s GER(gross enrolment ratio )is 11%, i.e. only 11% Indians study at college level. What about the 89%who do not go to the college? .How do we create and give respect to them as skilled professional?. An auto mechanic’s contribution to society is as important as an engineer’s contribution . How through structured wage differentiation and media success stories we build image of them as skilled workforce in the society ?The way India build brand image of IT professionals. It is the most difficult social challenge in India as we respect people who do “mind work” rather than “skilled handwork” .

INCLUSIVENESS

India is a socially complex and diverse land. The skill story will be successful if the youth from SC,ST,OBC,BPL across all districts are skilled on global skill standards across all key industry sectors for employability across the world. This can only happen only if government invests very heavily in skilling these youth for employability, not as a part of any government scheme but as a world class institutional framework .Public Private Partnership (PPP) models will not work as 56 % Indians work in agriculture & another 37% work in MSME (micro small and medium enterprises).1% Indians working in urban corporate India have very little understanding of aspirations and social reality of rural poor who have to be skilled for employability in their social milieu.