13 SKILL DEVELOPMENT: OPPORTUNITIES & CHALLENGES IN INDIA
Dr. Renu Tyagi
Associate Professor, M. M. H. College, Ghaziabad Dr. Priya Singh
Assistant Professor, Government PG College, Noida
Abstract - India has witnessed speedy boom in current years, pushed via way of means of the improvement of new-age industries. Economic growth has accelerated due to the advent of new industries in India. Rapid technological changes and complex economic activities have made jobs more and more skill intensive In spite of the emphatic pressure laid on schooling in India, there's nonetheless a scarcity of professional manpower to cope with the growing desires and needs of the economy. Today all economies need a skilled workforce to meet global quality standards. It is needed to prepare a generation of skilled employees and youth in alignment with the modern day market demands. To meet new technologies and skills, many skill development schemes have been implemented by the Government. Skill development can expand professional competency, reduce unemployment, increase productivity and improve standard of living. Skill development includes business profits, improved performance, improved quality, improved communication and improved career opportunities.The objective of the study is to analyze the essential requirement of skill development and to adopttechnologies.
Keywords: Skill Intensive, Professional Manpower, Skilled workforce, Professional Competency.
1. INTRODUCTION
In a highly competitive and globalized economy, workers have a higher level of skill to be able to perform their tasks efficiently in order to meet the required quality standards and increase the efficiency of the entire value chain process. You need to have knowledge. Therefore, in order to facilitate the application and dissemination of newly introduced technologies, the training and
education system needs to be reformed to improve the skills of the workforce. Such challenges are developing countries such as India that require a more skilled workforce to attract foreign direct investment (FDI), expand foreign trade, and thereby support industrial and economic development.
Skills and knowledge are the driving force of economic and
14 social development in all countries.
Economies with higher and better levels of skills respond more effectively to the opportunities &
challenges of the world of work.
(GOI, 2009). Skill may be defined as the set of competencies essential to carry out the required tasks in the most efficient way while maintaining the agreed set of quality standards. Skill development is a way to empower the workforce with the necessary skills, knowledge through vocational or technical training to meet the industry requirements and to ensure competitiveness in the dynamic global market (Maclean, 2013). Skills may be broadly classified into hard skills and soft skills. Hard skills are technical skills related to an organization's core business.
Machine operation, computer logs, financial procedures, safety standards, sales management.
Such skills are usually easy to observe, quantify, measure, and can be taught systematically. Soft skills, on the other hand, are personal characteristics that cannot be quantified.
Communication, listening, providing feedback, problem solving, conflict resolution, etc.
These are applicable in all situations. Whether at work or in everyday life (Rao, 2010).
National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) – According to
India, skills can be divided into four levels according to the level and length of training required.
Skill level 1 (quasi-qualification) refers to the skills that can be acquired through short courses, targeted interventions, and on- thejob training. Skill level 2 (skills) refers to job-specific skills that can be acquired through technical or vocational training. Skill level 3 (high skill) refers to skills related to highly technical or commercial work and can be obtained through degree, diploma, and graduate training. Skill level 4 (highly specialized skills) refers to skills with a high degree of research and design expertise that can be acquired through years of work experience.
Globalization, knowledge and competition are driving the need for a highly skilled workforce, as both developing and developed countries can accelerate economic growth to a higher trajectory.
Today, all economies need skilled youth to meet global demands and to increase foreign trade, bring advanced technology to domestic industries, and support industrial and economic development.
Therefore, skills and knowledge are the main drivers of socio-economic growth and development in each country. It has been observed that countries with quality human capital have higher GDP and per capita income and tend to better
15 adapt to the challenges and
opportunities of the world of work.
Skill development is also important for India from a socio- economic and demographic point of view. A multi-faceted and efficient skills development system is essential for the economy.
Further, India is destined to be a contributor to the global workforce pool on account of demographic bonus, with the growth rate of higher working age population as compared to its total population and home to the second largest population (with a headcount of around 1.4 billion by 2025) in the world with distinct advantage of having the youngest population with an average age of 29 years as against the average age of 37 years in China and the US and 45 years in Western Europe (FICCI, 2014).
1.1 Objectives of the Study
1. To study the present skill capacity of India.
2. To study the challenges faced by skill development system in India.
3. To suggest possible solutions or ways forward.
2. SKILL GAP ANALYSIS
Skill gaps are large gaps between the skills required by the workforce and current skills. In India, there is a large skill gap between the skills that the industry demands for rapid economic growth and the
skills that young people acquire through education and training.
This gap between supply and demand not only affects economic growth, but also hinders the overall growth of the economy as a whole. Therefore, it is the Government's responsibility to recognize such skill gaps and take new initiatives to fill these gaps to ensure inclusive growth.
2.1 Demand for Skills
India tracks its economy in three sectors: agriculture, industry and services. The agricultural sector includes crops, sericulture, horticulture, dairy and livestock, fisheries, aquaculture and forestry.
The industry includes various production subsectors. Services include software, IT, construction,
retail, hospitality,
telecommunications, healthcare, education, banking, insurance and other economic activities (Agrawal
& Bhatt, 2011).
In India, the proportion of the agricultural population is expected to drop to 40% by 2020.
The movement of workforce to the industrial and services sectors is expected to continue in India as these sectors have the greatest potential for job creation. NSDC predicts that by 2022, the demand for skilled workers will be highest in the automotive, construction, textile and transportation industries. We find that the need
16 for skilled workers is limited not
only to traditional sectors such as automobiles and BFSI, but also to other emerging sectors such as organized retail.
2.2 The Supply of Skills
India is a country with the population of over 1.2 billion people and it is expected to become one of the most populous countries by 2025, with a population of around 1.4 billion (Dhar 2013).
According to a research by Boston Consulting Group, it is estimated, India will have a surplus of active population (in the working age 15- 59 years) about 60% of total population (Duggal, 2014). By 2026, around 64% of the population of India is expected to be in the category of active population (age bracket of 15–59 years), with merely 13% aged above 60 years. This phenomenon for an economy when majority of its population is active is referred as the stage of reaping the demographic dividend. India is poised to become the youngest country of the world and the average would be 29 years which would be around 28% of the world`s workforce. During this phase, India will have a remarkable percentage of the total population available for working and contributing towards Gross Domestic Product. While in the same period, the average age of the
population in China and US is expected to be 37 years and in Western Europe, it would be 45 years. Thus, such demographic potential offers India an unprecedented edge over other western economies and India is expected to enjoy the benefit until 2040 (Planning Commission, 2013a). Such increasing percentage of active population will provide India an opportunity to improve labour productivity, boost production and within the next 10–
15 years, position itself among the developed countries of the world (Chenoy, 2012).
2.3 Demand-Supply Gap
NSDC has projected an incremental requirement of 347 million skilled personnel in 21 high growth sectors in India but the country is faced with a significant skill development challenge as over the next decade, every year approximately 12 million people are expected to join the workforce.
In contrast, the country has a total training capacity of around 4.3 million, which is just 36% of the entrants and thus depriving every year around 64% newcomers of the opportunity of the skill development training. Evidently, India will face a great challenge of bridging this gap and developing skills of its increasing workforce over the next few decades.
17 3. SKILL DEVELOPMENT
INITIATIVES IN INDIA
Government of India has recognized the need for a well defined framework for skill development and has formed various organizations at national and state levels to take the responsibility of skill development.
A number of agencies — national agencies, 17 ministries, several sector skill councils (SSCs), 35 state skill development missions, and some other industry bodies are functioning to achieve the national skill development mission.
Prime Minister’s National Council on Skill Development
The Prime Minister's National Council on Skills Development, the main coordinating body, was established to coordinate and consider policies. The council is chaired by the Prime Minister and is made up of ministers responsible for human resources development, finance, rural development, heavy industry, labor and employment, housing and urban poverty reduction. The council has a vision of creating 500 million qualified people through a qualification system that needs to be dynamic and highly comprehensive. The council is responsible for setting policy objectives, governance models, financing, and strategies related to
skill development. It also reviews planning developments, guides revisions at the center, manages the start and end of sections or programs or schemes as a whole, and coordinates public-private initiatives.
National Skill Development Coordination Board (NSDCB) The NSDCB chaired by the Deputy Chairman (Planning Commission) would assist the Prime Minister`s National Council and coordinate the action for skill development.
The responsibility of the board is to specify the strategies for implementing the decisions of the Council on skill development and formulate suitable operational guidelines to meet the objectives of skill development. It is expected to develop strategies and solutions to tackle the various issues related to
regional imbalances,
socioeconomic concerns, shortage of quality teachers, gender divides and develop a framework of institutionalize such measures.
The board evaluates the regional skill gaps and formulate action plans to bridge such gaps. It also facilitates and coordinates to reposition the employment exchanges as the outreach points for accumulating and providing information on skill development and employment and promote them to function as career counselling centres. The board is
18 also responsible to check, assess,
and evaluate the outcomes of the various skill development programmes and intimate the Prime Minister`s National Council on skill development about the same.
National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC)
The third stage of the skills development system is the National Skills Development Corporation, a non-profit corporation with an appropriate governance structure based on the Companies Act. Acts as a public- private partnership (PPP), with the participation of industry partnerships and business representatives to develop training facilities and improve vocational training. As required by national policies on skills development, NSDC is expected to produce regular and annual reports on its policies and actions and make them publicly available. In addition to the needs of the unorganized sector, NSDC also aims to meet the requirements of the labor market.
The central government has established the National Skills Development. It also aims to raise funds from the central government, state governments, public and private sectors. NSDC has a vision to train about 150 million people under the National Skill Development Policy.
National Policy on Skill Development
The Government of India has set a goal of improving the skills of 500 million people, and the Ministry of Labor and Employment has formulated a national skills development policy to achieve this.
The policy outlines the roles played by different stakeholders.
Centraland state governments, industries, trade unions and societies all have to play to establish a culture of competence in India. The policy emphasized the need for short-term, industry- related courses, stating that the government should complement the skills development initiative of the private sector. In addition, she advocated developing an infrastructure for vocational training and on-thejob training, transforming an existing job center into a career guidance center to guide applicants to training, apprenticeship and work. The directive also called for the establishment of an effective assessment and reliable certification system and the disclosure of information on the results of training institutions to ensure transparency.
3.1 State Skill Development Missions
The majority of state governments or union regions have established
19 their own State Skills Development
Missions (SSDMs) for targeted skill development in their respective states. SSDM plays an important role in facilitating skills development by identifying key sectors for job creation and working with appropriate government, industrial and private training agencies. Each state implements an SSDM framework that best suits its needs and capacity building vision. Some states have incorporated SSDM as a legal entity under the Chief Secretary or Prime Minister, while others are subordinate to appropriate state government departments such as human development, labor and planning.
In addition, some state governments are beginning to allocate budgets and set annual goals for skill development.
4. CHALLENGES
Inadequate Infrastructure: NSDC has predicted an incremental requirement of 347 million skilled personnel in India but the country is faced with a significant skill development challenge as over the next decade, every year approximately 12 million people are expected to join the workforce.
In contrast, the country has a total training capacity of around 4.3 million, thus depriving every year around 64% newcomers of the opportunity of the skill
development training. It is a major challenge such as huge infrastructure setup to bridge this gap.
Low industry interface: The industry interface is very important for education/training institutions as it helps to assess regional/regional qualification needs and thereby update course content. Industry ties play an important role for education/
training institutions to build a strong image for students. This ensures that the learning program is relevant to the actual needs of the industry. Most training institutions have few industry interfaces, resulting in poor performance in the skills development sector in terms of placement records and salaries offered.
Low Student Mobilization:
Registration with VET institutions such as ITI and Polytechnic remains low compared to their registered capacity. The main reasons for this problem are the mobilization of students for further education due to legitimate thinking, resistance to migration, and low starting salaries.
Vocational training is not considered desirable for students, and they prefer regular degrees because, if all other conditions are
20 the same, this is more valuable
than a certificate.
Direct admission without assessment: One of the main reasons for the poor quality of education is the infrequent pre- evaluation or entrance exams before students enter a training institution. Random selection of courses can lead to discrepancies in student interests and skills.
This means that dropouts will occur because the student does not meet the learning requirements.
Lack of standardization: The lack of standardization of curriculum and training systems makes it impossible to compare courses between different training institutions, creating ambiguity among students about the skills taught in a particular course at a training institution. There is a lack of standardized approaches for measuring and evaluating competency results.
Skills Relevance: The curriculum of some courses in specialized institutions does not provide education that meets the needs of the industry, resulting in inadequate placement records.
Therefore, such an outdated and inflexible curriculum makes some training programs completely outdated, resulting in specific
skills that exceed your needs.
Regularly updating the curriculum and correspondingly expanding the training infrastructure can be time consuming and costly.
Career Counseling: Students lack proper career advice due to inadequate placement statistics and weak ties to the training institution industry. Research institutes are often located in rural areas, but the work provided to trainees is in urban areas. Lack of information about job types and locations can lead to informed decisions when developing skills.
High Cost: The cost of education is high and not affordable for many students seeking education. The planning committee estimates that about 80% of young professionals do not have the opportunity to receive further training. In addition, poor placement balance and high training costs due to low salary offers after training is not appealing to the target group.
5. RECOMMENDATIONS
Based on the analysis, the following recommendations are made to improve the quality of training and to reduce the skill gap in India
Evaluation of Training Institutes: There is an urgent need to provide students with
21 quality education in order to
improve employability. In addition to providing grants to training institutions, NSDC needs to evaluate the performance of such institutions and develop several methods to improve their performance. Such initiatives can be configured by providing incentives based on the performance of the training institution. This can be evaluated against specific criteria. Acceptable salary package, total number of students with industry. Such institutions can also provide financial support. This helps to intensify competition between institutions in order to provide quality education and deploy more students.
Skills Survey: In order to bridge the gap between the demand and supply of the skills, it is necessary to find out the main causes for this gap. Surveys can be conducted to find the exact skill requirement from the employers. Analysis of such surveys would help in designing course structures of the training programs and thus standardized course curriculum or training delivery systems can be developed.
Enlighten students: Students should be made aware of the existing training institutes, courses offered and career opportunities
after course completion. Such information can be made available through newspapers, magazines or centralized portals which list all the recognized institutes, courses offered, placement records along with the institute ranking. This will help the students to choose the right institute and course based on their interests and demand in the market. Moreover it will also help in keeping a check on the fraudulent institutes which are cheating students and are not credible.
5.1 Challenges before Skill Development Initiatives in India
& Ways Forward
Despite diverse focused efforts, there's nonetheless a protracted manner to carry the ability improvement task of entirety because of the presence of positive extreme key demanding situations with inside the course of the task.
Some of those obstacles in conjunction with their viable answers are mentioned below:
Demand & Supply Mismatch: The demand made by the industries and supply of labour-force mismatch leads to aggravate all types of skill development initiatives of the Government and its partner agencies as:
• The number of people formally trained in a year is only 1,100,000 by Ministry
22 of Labour and Employment
and approximately
3,200,000 trained by 17 other central government ministries.
• According to the Manpower Group (USA), in Germany, USA, France, and Japan, the percentage of employers who find it difficult to fill jobs is 40%, 57%, 20% and 80%
respectively as compared to Indian employers (67%).
Way forward: Therefore, the ideal scenario is one in which the labor supply can be transformed into a skilled workforce that the industrial sector can easily absorb.
However, in India, a small portion of the workforce is actually formalized. It has been observed that while there are more people than low skilled jobs available, there are more high-skilled jobs available for such jobs. This supply-demand mismatch indicates that there is a serious mismatch between the education and skills that young people are learning and the demands of the labor market.
Therefore, to create a people- centric approach to skills development, coordinate the skills development initiative with supply and demand scenarios across regions, industries and labor markets to respond to changes in the supply of new skills and jobs.
Industry needs need to be quickly reflected in appropriate and efficient trainingprogram.
6. CONCLUSION
As India aims to be one of the strongest economy, it becomes compulsory to ensure its growing workforce being capable to handle the incoming disruption and find suitable jobs. Skilled labor is an essential factor which is going to remain in demand for many coming years. Many opportunities for entrepreneurship are going under construction. The main aim of the skill India program is to provide training in market relevant skills and to create opportunities for the development of talents. Skills play a vital role in modern economy and vocational education and training is aimed at enhancing the employability of an individual through transition into the labour market. New technologies and new kinds of jobs have placed greater emphasis on skill training which is becoming a process of lifelong learning.For transforming its demographic dividend, a proficient ability improvement framework isneed of the hour.
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