There is shortage of skilled and qualified workers in all sectors, especially in agriculture, manufacturing and the services industry. To bridge this gap from the Industry perspective, there is need to enhance the academic, social, personal and professional skills of students in order to meet the ever-changing needs of employers, the economy and the society, says Sandeep Budhiraja
It’s widely accepted that skills, resourcefulness and knowledge of people are the key agents of social change. They are also the driving forces of economic growth and technological development. Due to huge demographic dividend, the proportion of working age population in India has substantially increased over time. It’s estimated that India will surpass other large developing and developed countries as a super power and big stakeholder in global matters by 2020, with a large proportion of a youthful, dynamic, talented and innovative workforce.
The broad bandwidth in the working population age will offer India a huge strategic advantage against other developed nations and help in increasing national saving rates and decreasing dependency ratio that will accelerate the economic growth. However, the unemployment of large number of educated youth is one of the most intimidating problems faced by developed and developing nations. Therefore, in order to avail the huge demographic dividend, India will have to take necessary measures to improve the skills, competencies and personal attributes of the workforce to meet the requirement of talented and competent personnel across the world.
A study by the International labour Organization has estimated that by 2020, the average age of working population in India will be 29 years as against 46 years in Europe, 40 years in the US and 47 years in Japan. It is also predicted that over the next decade, India will have 116 million workers in the work-starting age, as compared to China’s 94 million only. Even in the coming 20 years, the labour force in India will increase by 32 per cent, whereas it will decline in China by 5 percent and in the industrialised world by 4 per cent.
Boston Consulting Group has predicted that by 2020, the world will have to deal with the shortage of 47 million skilled working people. With the constantly evolving technology, the requirement of workers with high levels of technical and soft skills has increased. As per a Government report, between 2015 and 2022, around 119 million skilful people will be required by 24 sectors like real estate and construction, IT and ITES, logistics, warehousing, transportation and packaging, healthcare and education, handlooms, agriculture and allied services. The skills gap report by National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) informed that most of the sectors except agriculture will have the maximum human resource requirement in the next five years. The IT sector has gained popularity among youth in the last few years due to its charm, high salary package, dignity and white collar status.
The biggest difficulty is out of the total youth population in our country, only one per cent is highly skilled, 17 per cent will be skilled, 40 per cent will be semi-skilled and 43 per cent will be minimally skilled. The industry sources said that at least 20-30 per cent of the workforce joining from the universities or other academic institutions is unemployable, hence taking the supply gap to about 2.7 million persons.
Employability Gap
A study was conducted to find what knowledge is imparted in the educational institutionIJ versus what abilities are required by industryIJ According to the findings, communication skills have the highest degree of gap on employability barometer, whereas life skills and fundamental skills have moderate gap, and social skills and technical skills have a low gap. This gap exists because of the inapt training of the youth passing out from schools and colleges to get employed in industry.
Due to growing talent mismatch, many companies are unable to fill certain positions because they don’t find the talent they need. There is massive shortage of skilled and qualified workers in all sectors especially agriculture, manufacturing and service industries. In order to bridge this gap, there is a need to enhance the academic, social, personal and professional skills of the students to meet the ever-changing needs of employers, economy and society.
Skill Development Initiative
The Government, way back in 11th Five-Year Plan, gave emphasis on the need of improving quality of education and expanding educational facilities for achieving quick and inclusive growth. A three-tier institutional structure has been established by the Government for the skill development in India. There is also a need for the industries and academic fraternity to join hands and contribute towards the Government’s Skill Development Mission.
Though the educational institutions have shown a noteworthy growth over last decade, the number of educated unemployed youth has considerably increased.
According to NASSCOM, every year more than 3 million graduates and post graduates are added to the Indian labour force. However, out of these only 25 per cent of engineering and medical students, and 10-15 per cent of other graduates in India are employable.
The less availability of high-quality school and college education, and the shortage of appropriately skilled youth across many industries have emerged as the most critical and complex challenge to India’s growth. During the graduation phase, the students remain unfamiliar with the necessary technical and marketable skills required to get employed in any industrial sector.
So, academic institutions need to reconstruct their syllabi of the graduation and PG degree courses in tune with the high speed changes taking place in the technology and train them as per the requirements of industry. There is also need of reverse osmosis that means experts from industry should come forward and contribute in academics to help in producing employable talented workforce. The joint initiatives by the industry and academia will play a vital role in reducing the talent gap and make youth ready for future.
(The writer is chief executive officer, DOOR Training and Consulting India Pvt ltd)