Skill India – At the Scale of India..!

At the offset of being a country that is about to reap the benefits of its demographic dividends for the next 10 to 15 years the government of India is trying to do all that it can to make the best of it. It is said that by 2020 the average age of the Indian population would be 29 years, which in other words would make India the youngest country in the world by the virtue of its human capital. Imagine the possibilities of such young India provided its young population is skilled enough to take up the opportunities in a clamoring market.

With huge foreign direct investment coming in to India, with the entrepreneurial spurt backed by investors and also with the optimized ease of business by the government in this country, employment would no longer be a problem as much as employability is going to be. But one thing that is alarming is the percentage of skilled labor in India which is nowhere near to the Industry demand.

-The NSSO survey says that we have 2.2% of skilled and employable population in India and this has pretty much remained the same since 2005 against 45 % in China, 68% in UK, about 80% in Japan and 96% in Korea. The concept of formal education is not going to help us to make up to this skill deficit, at least not at the speed that is needed. There is a crying need of skilling, instead of conventional training and teaching methodologies. For the first time in Indian history we have a ministry to cater to the skill needs of this country – Ministry of Skill development and Entrepreneurship   which is headed by Rajiv Prathap Rudy who is committed to bring about a substantial improvement in the skilled population percentage in the next 5 years. But Government alone cannot do much in this, that too when the quantum is so huge i.e. to skill over 400 million people in the next 4 to 5 years, there is a great need of public participation in this.

Skilling initiatives at micro level by private entities can be a great way ahead. Instead of looking at level of education, if we start looking at skill quotient in every individual there is something to offer among the most of us. It might be as simple as Driving - which is a skill in itself, offered to an individual can create an economic opportunity. Today some of the multinational companies are taking a skill only approach where an individual gets hired for her/his ability to do things but not for the education. So imparting vocational skills starting from Cooking to Coding to the ones that are educationally deprived but intellectually empowered can solve most of the employability issues. If we put this in to perspective skill exchange in a massive scale across population can bring about a paradigm shift in the skill India approach.

Let me know if you have something to say on this.