Knowledge delivery systems are changing and this budget has an opportunity to bring in policies that can give a big push to India’s manufacturing ambitions. The budget can provide the necessary policy push to ensure that Indian youth learn courses at ease and without burning a hole in their pockets, they say.
As the country has a young population — with a huge chunk in the workable-age bracket — skilling and reskilling requirements would go up. Ensuring these needs are met would also help attract more manufacturers to set up factories in the country.
Sumit Kumar, CBO, TeamLease Degree Apprenticeship, acknowledges that in the last two years, online education has benefited many and classrooms have not been just confined to a physical location. However, blue-collared workers, who are at the bottom of the pyramid, have not been able to reap the benefits here. “We need to break the barriers of the traditional classrooms. The classroom need not be just confined to four walls, it could be on-the-job. It could even be online,” he says.
A blend of both online learning and on-the-job learning can make a huge impact and address the employability and the cross-enrollment issues, Kumar says.
Another advantage of online or hybrid courses is that it does not require the physical infrastructure that an offline delivery system demands. This would make it easier to start institutes that deliver such courses and the fees can also be affordable.
Atul Kumar Tiwari, Secretary, Ministry of Skill Development Entrepreneurship, explains that India’s demographic dividend presents a rare opportunity to create a high-quality skilled workforce for the world, especially nations with aging or declining national populations. For this, a suitable skill ecosystem is required. “As we recover from the pandemic, our country is moving up the value chain and getting into new areas of emerging technologies. We find ourselves faced with the mammoth task of upskilling and reskilling over half of the Indian workers, leveraging new-age technology, to meet the talent demand,” he says.PLI for skilling
Lohit Bhatia, President, Indian Staffing Federation, says the government should, through the budget, encourage hybrid programmes. There was a need for a skill-incentive scheme like the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme. “A PLI-like scheme can come for construction and agriculture.” Bhatia says these segments have a large number of informal workers and policies should be designed to make them part of the formal workforce. Companies that can attract such talent should be given an incentive, “something like a 5% subsidy from the government. With the PLI tag, it will be taken more seriously,” he says.
iStockThe budget will also have to adequately focus on skills beyond blue-collared jobs.
These observations resonate with what Prime Minister Narendra Modi said earlier this month. Modi says India has the potential to become the skill capital of the world. The country has 1.4 billion people and an average age of 29; 75% of its population is of working age.
Industry experts say given the times we live in, the budget is rightly placed to give skilling a big boost.
Over the years, the government has come up with various initiatives to develop skilled workers. However, many of them have also remained underutilised. As education and learning continue to evolve with changing times and the rise of technology and digitisation, it is high time skilling goes beyond physical training, reiterate experts.
With technology redrawing the map of skilling, Tiwari says, greater emphasis is being laid on new-age job roles. “Currently, we are witnessing a surge in the demand in areas such as AI, cloud computing, machine learning, blockchain management, data analytics and robotics, resulting in the emergence of new job capabilities. Therefore, training in new-age skills has also become imperative as they play a vital role in preparing the workforce for pandemic-disrupted global labour markets and increasing competitiveness,” he says. “We will need the industry to not only help us identify skill gaps in emerging areas of technology and services sectors, but also support our skilling and capacity-building efforts by providing the learners with opportunities for internships and employment. I hope that these aspects are reflected in the Union Budget 2023.”
Paying partners faster
Bhatia also points out the issue of skilling partners’ ability to recover the investment money from NSDC. The skill partners get paid only six months after the candidates complete training. The process now is too long, especially as skilling partners have to set up physical infrastructure, get the courses approved, find trainers and ensure that candidates find employment and stay in it for a minimum of six months. “Which is why most skilling partners have exited this business in the past one to two years,” he adds. “We have been requesting the NSDC and the Ministry of Skills to look at this in a very different way, something similar to the skill credits in Singapore. If the government were to transfer skill credits to the people, and when people complete the skill programmes and get a job, they can then redeem the skill credits to the skilling partner. This will help in easier and faster reimbursement from NSDCs.”
It is also time to look at focused programmes such as green skills, says Kumar of TeamLease. If India wants to boost manufacturing, we need to focus on green skills as well. “There should be emphasis on launching a green skill programme that will cover sectors such as manufacturing, agriculture, hospitality and textiles. Even in terms of power and energy, these green skills are essential,” he adds.
