A Nation of Opportunity: Building India's 21st Century Workforce

The reality of building capacity for the 21st century is that we do not know what the work of the future will be like or how technology will influence health and financial issues. The challenge is to prepare men and women to think critically, to engage in mental activity, or habits of mind, that

“…use facts to plan, order, and work toward an end; seek meaning or explanations; are self-reflective; and use reason to question claims and make judgments…”

It may be that our task is not only to prepare men and women to “fit into the future” but to shape it. “…If the complex questions of the future are to be determined… by human beings…making one choice rather than another, we should educate- all of them - to join in the conversation about those choices and to influence that future…”

The 21st century seems quite different than the 20th in the capabilities people need for work, citizenship, and self-actualization in India. In response, society’s educational systems must transform their objectives, curricula, pedagogies, and assessments to help all students attain the sophisticated outcomes requisite for a prosperous, attractive lifestyle based on effective contributions in work and citizenship

When we look back over 30-plus years after the liberalization and globalization of our economy, we realize that many things have changed remarkably, but others seem not to have changed at all. Issues that have been with us for the past 25 years include:

“how to make the learning and educating more exciting for students; how to communicate what they actually do; how to improve the writing and communication skills of graduates; how to bring the richness of mental and intellectual development into the current workforce up bringing individuals be responsible individual and citizen; how to give students a basic understanding of mental fitness; and how to get students to think about professional ethics and social responsibility.”

But for the most part, things have changed in astounding ways. We have moved from slide rules to calculators to PCs to wireless laptops to tablets to Smartphones. Just think of all that implies.

Employers, universities and professional bodies agree that India needs to develop professionals who are highly skilled and ready to face the challenges of increased competition. More than ever we need professionals who are responsive to economic, social, cultural, technical and environmental changes and can work flexibly and intelligently across business contexts. Indian industry requires new graduates who understand the part they play in building their organizations, and have the practical skills to work effectively in their roles.

However, really contributing in the workplace means more than having the necessary technical skills.

“It means engaging with the organization and its goals, understanding the dynamics of the workplace, and taking up a job role with an informed knowledge of all of its requirements. It also means applying a broad range of competencies and skills learned in many contexts and through a range of experiences.

Indian businesses aspire to be more competitive, more effective and more innovative.

The graduate workforce is a key part of the talent pool businesses drawn from, to further these objectives. Universities clearly want to produce graduates with the skills that are highly regarded by employers and are seen to contribute to the country’s prosperity and social capital. Emerging professionals want to attain interesting employment, and build their professional careers.

The 21st Century job skill demand is different at work place than the 20th Century. 

Due to global slowdown and economic crises, lessons learned from the past that people could have achieved success despite being dull thinkers. Traditional methods usually worked who knows what to do. Present situation and challenges are different. There is a need and huge demand of original thinking and methods to a new situation. 

In the work place, the ability to learn a new job is more important than what the applicant already knows. Most employers who understand this, and who requires 21st century skills as employment prerequisites requires more on thinking skills, judgments, analytical skills, problem solving, creativity, innovation etc.

Already our Asian rivals are competing not just in low-skilled manufacturing, but in high-tech products and services. Once, we worried about a global arms race. The challenge this century is a global skills race and that is why we need to push ahead faster with our reforms to extend education opportunities for all…

In a globally competitive national economy, there will be almost no limits to aspirations for upward mobility. Globalisation dictates that the nations that succeed will be those that bring out the best in people and their potential.

And this is the new opportunity for India. Put simply: in the past, we unlocked only some of the talents of some of the people; the challenge now is to unlock all the talents of all of the people.

Scientific progress has become a more direct driver of the innovation process in India. Technical progress has accelerated in areas where innovation is directly rooted in science (e.g. biotechnology, information technology, new materials) and firms’ demand for links to the science base has increased in India. Innovation now often requires more external and more multidisciplinary knowledge, as many technologies have become extremely complex.

Innovation in the computer industry, for example, requires knowledge from several scientific disciplines, including physics, mathematics and language theory, as well as a range of other specific capabilities. Owing to increased competition, a more short term orientation of research and development and the high “burn” rate of knowledge, firms have also been forced to save on intramural R and D expenditures and to search for alternative sources of knowledge. World is in transition to a knowledge based economy and its competitive edge will be determined by the abilities of its people to create, share and use knowledge more effectively.

INDIA is facing challenges in terms of competitiveness as well as economic and sustainable growth. Competition is increasing from other regions of the world that have been quicker to adapt and pursue new opportunities; and the gap between skills and jobs is widening. INDIA must invest in developing entrepreneurial and innovative skills to build sustainable economic development, create jobs, generate renewed economic growth and advance human welfare. India needs to equip future generations with the necessary skills for the 21st century.

Over the past 30 years advanced economies have become increasingly hungry for skills. New technologies have combined with intellectual and knowledge assets – the ‘intangibles’ of research, design, development, creativity, education, science, brand equity and human capital – to transform the economy. Across all sectors – manufacturing and services, high tech and low tech, domestic and internationally traded, public and private, large corporation and small enterprise – organisations have prospered by allowing highly skilled individuals the freedoms and flexibilities to deploy new technologies to rapidly create tailored products for increasingly sophisticated customers. The tripling of business investment in ‘intangibles’ such as human capital, research and development, software and design between  2010 and 2020.

Economy will be more and more based on knowledge and science in the future, human capital is essential not only for individual well-being and social inclusion but also for competitiveness and openness of the economy. The emergence of global skill webs reflect the salience of skill as a source of competitive advantage within multi- national companies, but they do not simply reflect the growing importance of knowledge and skills to product innovation (where the value of human capital is likely to remain at a premium), but due to the globalisation of high skills that has far reaching implications for the relationship between skills, jobs and rewards.