Skilling begets progress — to bridge India’s skills gap and develop a more mature ecosystem that prioritizes not just opportunities today but also a secure means of livelihood tomorrow, the path ahead is marked by several critical steps.
Today, India stands at a pivotal juncture—our nation forms the world’s fifth largest economy with tremendous scope for unparalleled growth, but also with a pressing need for enhanced employability. With a vision of Viksit Bharat for India@2047 to strive towards, we must reckon with how to skill today’s youth to bridge the unemployment-employability gap while shaping nation-building and progress. The Union budget 2024-25 echoed the interim budget’s focus on ‘yuva’ as one of four major groups to support. Highlighting a welcome package of five schemes facilitating employment and skilling for 41 million youth over a 5-year period, with ₹1.48 trillion allocated for education, employment, and skilling, today’s announcements bode well for the future of our youth, given the government’s emphasis on skill development.
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| Siddharth Sharma, CEO, Tata Trusts |
The barriers faced by the workforce are immense: Nearly 73% of workers aged 15-59 years did not receive any formal or informal vocational or technical training, according to the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2022-23. With India’s demographic dividend expected to peak around 2041 and the working-age population forecast to shrink, we must seize the current window of opportunity to harness the potential of India’s labour force and fuel economic growth. In parallel, we must leave no young person behind, and ensure that the fruits of skilling initiatives are also reaped by women, whose labour force participation has been historically low. By introducing initiatives to this end, the Budget indicates a positive way forward. Empowering women is not just a social good but also an economic imperative. In fact, a Barclays report indicates that ensuring that women account for half the new workforce created by 2030 is critical for India to attain an 8% GDP growth rate.
Skilling begets progress—to bridge India’s skills gap and develop a more mature ecosystem that prioritizes not just opportunities today but also a secure means of livelihood tomorrow, the path ahead is marked by several critical steps. One is to bolster institutional support, reaffirmed by the budget’s emphasis on upgrading industrial training institutes. With the mission of advancing a future-ready workforce, training institutions can equip youth with skills to succeed in the 21st century. Through the Indian Institute of Skills, established in collaboration with the government of India’s ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship and Tata Trusts, we strive to make this goal a reality.
By offering highly specialized trainings based on industry demand, across artificial intelligence, data analytics, digital manufacturing, and more, for instance, we hope to gear students up for success. The product of a unique collaborative endeavour, we expect that this institute, albeit at a nascent stage currently, can serve as a model spurring the rise of similar institutions that develop carefully curated courses to meet evolving work requirements and support gainful employment, particularly for those with unrealized potential who dropped out of the education system. It puts them back in the driver’s seat—endowing them with the tools and training needed to retain meaningful, fulfilling jobs.
To strengthen the skilling ecosystem, the active involvement of public and private players, and a strong industry-academia connect, is also vital. This, in turn, can enhance skilling infrastructure, augment the number of trainers available, and scale the reach of meaningful programmes and government schemes to far-flung parts of the country. Reinvigorating pioneering schemes, such as Skill India, National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship 2015—an update to which is anticipated—Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana, among others, can also strengthen the investment in vocational education, training, and entrepreneurial support. Further, conducting a thorough nationwide research and analysis of the factors behind unemployment and specific gaps in education and skilling might offer a constructive framework for the road ahead.
Transformative financing solutions including impact bonds, such as the Skill India Impact Bond, can also serve as a catalyst heralding progress. As a first-of-its-kind approach, this tool was designed to offer training and employment opportunities. It can drive a paradigm shift—from primarily government or CSR donor-funded programmes to a model drawing in greater impact investment, including from the private sector. With aspirations for long-term skilling outcomes, it helps overcome a demand-supply mismatch, ensuring that people are trained with the right skills for the right job. These also offer promising solutions for young women—who record high rates of enrollment.
As Malcolm X once said, “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today." India’s journey towards realizing its potential as a skilled nation may be riddled with obstacles, but the progress being made is promising. This is marked by ambitious schemes, innovative approaches, and collaborative efforts to sow the seeds of change and move India’s youth many steps closer to livelihood opportunities, laying a foundation for India’s development.
— Siddharth Sharma, CEO, Tata Trusts
This article was published on Livemint, both online and in print, on July 24, 2024. The text above is the online version.
