Opportunity for India: Develop skill or perish

More than 50 per cent of India’s population is below the age of 25. If we assume that this population is uniformly distributed across all ages, then 40 per cent is in the age group of 16-25. Assuming a total population of a billion people, we are then talking about 200 million people who are in, or about to enter, the job market. We know that about 10 per cent will go on to college, leaving us with 180 million people.

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These are the people who can form our army of skilled labour; those whose productivity will make sustainable growth feasible; the people whose improved income earning abilities will fuel the domestic demand that has been so far nurturing our growth. In other words, herein lies the future of India.

The problem is not only one of training them; it is also that once they are trained, others must know about it. In particular, the potential employers should be able to judge the veracity of the training process. The fact that we can move to various parts of the country to find the job that we want means that our section of the Indian labour market is an integrated one. We need the same for our skilled labour.

The HRD Minister has talked about a national exam --- an entrance test to all colleges. In the US, for instance, all graduating from school and wanting to get into a college sit for the SAT (scholastic aptitude test). This allows students from any part of the country to be uniformly tested for colleges in all parts of the country. The HRD Minister wants something similar for India.

This is an excellent initiative. However, we cannot stop at organising something for what is necessary for 10 per cent or, just for the 20 million below the age of 25 who will go on to college!

We need the same for the remaining 90 per cent or the 180 million people who will not get into college. Recall what the NIIT has done for the IT sector.

A study by the Population Reference Bureau, a private think tank, indicates that several developed countries will see a drop in their population over the next 50 years. Japan will lose 20 per cent of its population. Russia’s will drop by 17 per cent. About 44 per cent of the world’s population currently lives in the countries where fertility is at or below replacement levels.

As these economies see their workforce depleting due to superannuation; they will find numbers difficult to replace. Second, a huge inadequacy of skilled workers in the Indian economy presents an opportunity for productive employment of a sizeable number of our citizens. Third, as the world sees less and less growth opportunities in developed countries, investors and enterprises are keen to enter global developing markets that hold the promise of growth and higher return. As capital formation occurs, there would be a greater demand for skilled workers meeting international standards of quality and productivity.

The question that now arises is: what preparations do we need to undertake to capitalise on these opportunities? Quite simply, we need our manpower skilled to the standards that are nationally and globally benchmarked. This would help resolve the problem of unemployment domestically and at the same time remittances from our workforce abroad could ensure a better standard of living for people back home.

It enhances the image of the Indian workforce globally and encourages investment flowing inwards, thereby putting the multiplier into action, generating more jobs and encouraging further development. If we do not act with a sense of urgency, others would seize the initiative and in many ways shut this window of opportunity for India.

The downside of not investing in human capital and ignoring skill development on a countrywide scale can be catastrophic. First, the unemployment and underemployment figures are reaching an alarming proportion. This generates a significant amount of negative sentiments among the victims of this socio-economic inequity. These push them towards anti-social activities, and they could join the rank of terrorists, separatists and criminals, thus engineering socio-political instability.

Second, with societal needs comprising manufacturing, services and agriculture not being met, and as other economies meet the skills requirements of their industries, the handicap is going to hurt our industry even more and adversely undermine our competitiveness.

Third, as we have seen in some cases among the BPO/ITES, if the requisite skills are not available in the country, foreign establishments not willing to compromise on quality are likely to take flight and look for other countries to establish their operations. Apart from all this, there is the real problem of rural-urban migration.

A preliminary inquiry tells us that we need a skilled workforce in almost all sectors. In the construction sector alone, we need to skill in scaffolding, masonry, fencing, tiling, painting and finishing, plumbing, carpentry, building, sanitation, water, ready mix cement, facilities management and back-up support.

Skills should be benchmarked to national and, where possible, international standards. The system should provide for mobility and re-skilling opportunities as individuals gain in experience and expertise, and seek value addition for improvement in their prospects.

There are four challenges that need to be addressed. The first is availability of infrastructure: this can be resolved by bringing in “off hour” usage of the existing training and academic institutions, and most importantly, through redundancies that exist in the corporate sector.

The second is benchmarking. The skills must be nationally and globally benchmarked, and the content should be attuned to changes that take care of the variability that local conditions bring into the picture. This could be done by involving occupational experts from industry, academic experts with experience and the method of designing and delivering cutting-edge syllabi and assessments.

The third is quality assurance. The structure should include teams of visiting verifiers, quality inspectors, trainers to discharge training programmers and specially trained and qualified teams of independent assessors, who certify to benchmarked standards.

The fourth is the cost of training. These courses should be highly affordable. Besides, such training could be subsidised by development institutions, employers and philanthropic organisations, and be part of the corporate social responsibility programme.

There is enough room, requirement and opportunity for each of us to contribute.

There are some who talk about public/private participation. Hand over the ITIs to private sector managements and things will work out. It will not; we have too few ITIs and we have been trying to make this work for quite some time now. The fruits of such effort, if at all, are quite small compared to what must be done. The government has already taken a bold and new initiative with the unique identification exercise by bringing in a successful private sector entrepreneur and manager and put funds at his disposal with a clear mandate of what he must do. One needs a similar initiative in generating skill. Not a wishy-washy attempt of creating joint management teams where each can point to the other for inaction. Choose a successful entrepreneur, put money in his, or her, hands and give that person a simple objective of generating a skilled and employable workforce.

The writer is a former GOC-in-C, Western Command.