Our demographic dividend presents an opportunity that can be leveraged to create a skilled workforce

Managing an ever burgeoning population is a herculean task. It can also be an opportunity, but it all depends upon how we prepare ourselves to treat the population. According to the World Population Prospects-2022, India’s population will reach 1.428 billion on July 1, 2023. It will marginally be higher than the 1.426 billion figure for China at the time.

So, we are all poised to replace China as the most populous country in the world, but we have a distinction of 65 per cent of the total population being below the age of 35 years. This demographic dividend presents an opportunity that can be leveraged to create a high-quality skilled workforce for the rest of the world.

Every year over 12 million young people reach employable age in India, but we are unable to absorb them, as even many who are armed with higher degrees but are not equipped with employable skills. The India Skills Report (ISR) 2022 states that only 46.2 per cent of those coming out of higher educational institutions are employable.

It is high time for India to provide ‘Ready to Hire’ young workforce talent, as all the major developed countries like the US, Europe, Japan, Germany and China are reeling with an aged population. Some of the economists and social scientists link the problems like hunger, malnutrition and unemployment to India's vast population.

It was utter failure that even after 75 years of Independence and currently having the world’s youngest population, we have not been able to export quality skilled manpower to the world’s leading and expanding economies. We have the young people but without the potential of skills which make them more employable. Unfortunately our journey so far on the road to skilling has not been so satisfying.

As per the National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (NPSDE) 2015, the target was to impart various types of skills to 40 crore people by 2022. However, around four crore people have been trained. The NPSDE estimates that only 5.4 per cent of the workforce in our country has undergone formal skill training as compared to 68 per cent in the UK, 75 per cent in Germany and 96 per cent in South Korea.

Given the fact that 83 per cent of the workforce is engaged in the unorganized sector with limited training facilities, upgrading of skills, both in manufacturing and services sectors remains a challenge. The major challenges to skill development, as also pointed out by the NITI Aayog, involve mapping skill requirements sector-wise and geographically; making vocational training in school education as an aspirational choice; engaging industry for improved quality and relevance – scaling up the apprenticeship programme; integrating the informal sector into the skill development ecosystem; putting in place an effective, internationally recognized assessment and certification system.

Poorly skilled people means below the average output irrespective of the increase in the worker population ratio (WPR), which has increased to 52.6 per cent in 2020-21, as Union Minister of State for PMO, Dr Jitendra Singh, informed the Rajya Sabha in a written reply on December 14, 2022. He said that WPR has shown a continuous upward trend in the last four years, while the Unemployment Rate (UR) has witnessed a continuous declining trend since 2017-18 onward. If we are improving on the front of WPR and UT, that is just fine.

We need to focus on sustainable utilisation of human capital by arming them with skills. Let us not forget the fact that inculcating skills in our young children means encouraging them towards entrepreneurship as well.

How should we move forward so far as employable skill development is concerned? Mapping skill requirements for a demand driven skill development ecosystem is of paramount importance. We need to know what the areas are where the demand for skilled workforce is likely to pick up at home and abroad. Skill development plans and strategies should be developed by geography and sector by mapping the availability of infrastructure and on the basis of assessing skill requirements both at the national and state levels.

At present, we do talk of one district, one product, but none of us talk of skills required for the specific products of a district. The district administration needs to be galvanised not only to provide the information required for such mapping but also skill-specific demand projections.

Similarly, industry stakeholders must be incentivized to provide data on their skill requirements on an ongoing basis, which could be used as input for the skill requirement assessment made at different levels. Regular labour market studies should be conducted and published by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) in collaboration with the sector skill councils (SSCs). These studies should capture changes in industry requirements to assess the skill sets required and introduce changes in training curricula.

We should have vocational training innovation centres for systematic research and conducting longitudinal studies on improving vocational education. It is disappointing but a fact that today we don’t have enough skilled people to teach skills to our students. Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) have their own limitations. There is no mechanism to skill our youngsters to be good plumbers, carpenters and mansions so that they can look for jobs even abroad. It is all about getting trained on the job. They start as assistants or daily wagers with trained people and in due course of time pick up skills to earn their livelihoods, which is a meagre amount.

Capacities of teacher training institutes need to be upgraded to ensure the availability of qualified trainers. It is also important to provide for cross learning by teachers and industry experts through industry-institute linkages.

Niti Aayog has rightly recommended that a single regulatory body with branches in all states should be set up to lay down minimum standards for all players in the skilling system like training providers and assessors, and to issue National Skill Qualification Framework (NSQF) to be globally aligned certificates. To address the requirement of skilled workers in the unorganized sector, scaling up Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL), is required under the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), using bridge training, apprenticeship, dual training, work-based learning and advanced global courses.

In addition to scaling RPL, there should be a focus on the identification of transferable skills. This can be done by developing a skills or trade matrix; and highlighting the overlap of skills across different trades, such as information and communication technology (ICT), knowledge of multi-languages, etc. The most common transferable skills across the board should be made part of the employable skill development curriculum.

(The author is Training Partner with National Skill Development Corporation)