Bharat Meeting India... Really?

As the youngest country in the world and almost the most populated, India at the dawn of 2017 is staring at one of the largest human capital banks in the world. This however is just half the truth! The demographic dividend that India can reap as a country can easily turn out to be a royal disaster as well. With a mandate to practically train 33% of the entire country and put them to jobs by the year 2022, I just have one question to the entire industry – Are we really addressing the elephant in the room?

Yes, we need to think about it. Billions are being spent every year on creating the success story called “Skilled India” thousands of people are being trained by more than 1000 organizations across the length and breadth of the country, but the real motive of Bharat meeting India is still a glory, we need to achieve. To put things into perspective, we have more than 10 schemes for skill development and employment generation run by around 17 ministries. The mandate to train and place these 500 million Indians by 2022 is going to become a larger challenge day by day because the entire skill development ecosystem is evolving at a space which is slower than the space at which other ecosystems affecting it are evolving.

For instance, a couple of years ago, requesting employers to hire candidates from skill development projects used to take much lesser effort, than today. Reason? Well blame it on low joining ratio and an even lower retention rate. The employers giving on the spot job offers to candidates during campus interviews, now want to be sure of the student’s commitment and hence want them to come to the company premises for joining, work for a couple of days, before issuing offer letters / appointment letters to them. There is no doubt about the fact that as a system, skill development is finally taking shape with third party assessments, monitoring by various bodies and newer frameworks like the National Skills Qualifications Framework, which defines the job roles and qualification packs for the industry to train people on. But are we really moving that fast? I have a few doubts:

While most of the training and placement programs are targeted towards the skill development and employment (livelihood) for the beneficiaries, the budgets allocated towards the training, placement and post placement support need to be looked at. Most of the jobs being offered in the space are bottom of the pyramid jobs, where as per the employers the students can join even without such heavy training. The idea is to create a platform for employers and job seekers so that a culture of employment is created and if there is a shortfall in skills of the job seekers, then provide them a finishing school training to get the desired job. More importantly, the budgets allocated to training can be used towards placement and post placement support. If a student survives the first 6-9 months in a job, there are large chances that he / she is going to stick to the corporate world. The student may still leave the job for another one, but is unlikely to sit at home after that.

Today, the government is very active on the direct benefit transfer and similar schemes. I believe that if the government makes a couple of changes in the way it provides benefits to students under these schemes, we can see a positive change in the joining and retention ratio. For instance, the government must consider providing the post placement support amount to the bank accounts of the parents of the beneficiary students as this will ensure that the parents will start pushing these candidates to stay on the job. Today, the parents are practically unaware about the benefits and since they can’t see it, they won’t believe in it. However a direct benefit transfer of the post placement support money to the parents, will also start a debate on whether we should be paying the parents for something that the kids are doing or not – but debates never end, do they?

None-the-less, my piece on Bharat meeting India is just a reflection of what I believe should be the next steps of evolution for the skill development ecosystem in India and I am very sure that the more we involve the parents in the entire story, the better our results will be.