Skill development initiatives: a way to leverage the demographic dividend in India

Abstract

This is a universally accepted fact that the economic growth of the country and strength of any nation is mainly dependent on knowledge and skills based human resources. Looking to the rapidly increasing demand-supply gap and global competition, it is very important for the organizations to ensure an adequate supply of skills manpower and their optimize use. At the same time, the world s population is ageing fast. It is estimated that the global population aged 65 and above shall reach to 1.3 billion by 2040, which will be more than double of 530 million in 2010. Rapidly ageing population shall result in severe labor shortage across in the global market. The world s largest economies like Germany, France and US are expected to suffer due to the acute shortage of skilled workers. According to a global study, presently India is one of the largest labor-surplus countries worldwide in terms of its working age population. Today s the world is looking at India with very high expectations and most of the countries across the world are amazed at the journey India has embarked upon in skilling with a target of 500 million people by 2022. As briefly mentioned above, the organization is facing challenges in acquisition of good talent for different level of positions. It is more so in the case of blue-collar jobs. To overcome the challenges governments across the world, in developed as well as developing countries have began to focus intensely on developing frameworks to meet the skill demand. The government is trying to divert its working age people towards creativity and productivity so that they can remain competitive. India, by partnership with the world economies, is the way forward to make its skills development mission a grand success and presenting a role model for the others to emulate. Countries such as the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Singapore and South Africa have put the spotlight on quality and competiveness in Skills and Education space. India can certainly learn from the commendable initiative already taken by these countries in the field of skill development education and training. This report attempts to explain, explore and describe policy outline of few countries and emphasize on the best practices they follow as best practicesIndia has the advantage as compared to other countries because India has youngest populations in the world, with a median age of 25 in 2010, whereas the median age for US, China and japan are 27, 34 and 45 respectively. During the 2 to 3 decades India is expected to have one of the largest working age group (15-64 years) populations worldwide. This is an asset, which need to be capitalized on and transform India into a prominent exporter of skilled resources to the other pat of the world. The mobility of human resources is the long-term solution for sustaining the growth rates of countries and enabling them to surmount issues including demographic asymmetry and globalization of economies. India s strength as a source of a large young and mobile workforce is globally acknowledged.The objectives of the Skill Development is to find out how to create labor force equipped with the essentially required and regularly updated skills, knowledge and internationally recognized certification as well as qualifications to get access of decent employment. The objective is to increase the productivity as well as employability of the labor force both in all sectors, i.e. organized as well as unorganized sectors. To channelize the efforts of various sectors and enhance the capabilities of the present system such that it is adaptable to the todays fast changing technologies to fulfill the requirement of the labor market.The study will identify the existing Government Schemes, norms and parameters for skill development to bring it to a convergence, to identify common standards for matching Global Standards of skilled work force while fulfilling the domestic requirement, to study the gap and challenges of curriculum design, evaluation, quality of education and globally accepted certificates and to study effectiveness of existing schemes and dovetailing of all skill development schemesExisting policies and implementation of India has been studied and compared with the global leaders like Australia, Germany, U.K., South Africa, Korea and Singapore, in the field of skill development. The policies were studied on different parameters mentioned above and find out skill gaps.Upon the study of various national and international policies several gaps on the basis of parameters have been identified which can play a key role in development and growth of skill development such as heterogeneous nature of existing schemes, training institutes having a wide range of infrastructure, diverse nature of curriculum, no linkage between departments, Ministries, State Government and Central Government lack of industry focused demand on skilling of manpower Non-recognition of skills acquired by workers by employers particularly in the public sector. Transfer of credit of course for higher training or study. Curriculum is not as per the global standards for skilled work force as required by industry. Non-availability of data of trained and placed workforce at one place. Skill development schemes are Government driven, private participation in the skill development and training is very less. There is no linkage with the schools and colleges to provide skill training from the initial level. Skill development training is mainly focused to technical skill, non-technical skill is ignored. Skill development implementing agencies both government and private, vocational training providers are facing the challenges with mobilization of students, infrastructure, qualified trainer problem, third party assessment of the course and funding problem. The delivery, implementation and operational of the scheme is also a huge challenge within the existing framework.To bridge the gap the Government of India had initiated National Policy on Skill Development, to facilitate its target of imparting requisite skills training to 500 million people by 2022. The mission of the skill development initiative is to Upgrade skills to international standards through significant industry involvement and develop necessary frameworks for standards, curriculum and quality assurance, Enhance, support and coordinate private sector initiatives for skill development through appropriate Public-Private Partnership (PPP) models. The adoption of a much more robust approach is essential for putting in place a quality skill education and training framework in the country. To achieve the target of skill development mission, we arrive at conclusion that the existing policy should be modified in accordance with the need of the industry, restructure of existing system. Development of curriculum with focus on IT, Linkage with School, Linkage with Industry, Promotion of PPP model for infrastructure development. Focus on non-technical training, Design industry based curriculum, Transfer of credit, Restructuring of skill development mission.