Towards making India a skilled nation
India is the second most populous country in the world, after China. The rapid rise in National income in the last few years in India, is largely attributed to the huge English speaking population, and this target group has successfully transformed the landscape of the Information Technology industry in India.
In fact, IT and IT enabled services, together contribute over ten to twelve hundred thousand people being gainfully employed in many urban centers of India. Even States like Kerala, have opened up to IT like never before, and the capital city of Trivandrum, is now a thriving IT hub.
However, this success story is not without its own other side. The English speaking population is the cream of the society, the same society that has had access to the best of education, that has been able to widen their perspectives of every single opportunity. However, the rest of the gang -- the pure-Hindi speaking population, which is largely illiterate and untrained, and also hugely unskilled are pushed to the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.
If the Non-Governmental organizations could collaborate with the Government, through the National Skill Development Corporation, which is a Government of India body, a whole of benefits will follow.
These people should be trained as motor mechanics, painters, drivers, fitters, welders, plumbers, electricians, carpenters and so on. Each of these trades, it is always noticed, has a severe shortage of skills, not only in terms of the absolute number of people available, but also in terms of the quality of skilled people available.
An ideal option would be for the Government, to set up public-private partnerships and ensure that these trained people are exported to countries such as Australia and the Gulf countries,
Similarly, there is an urgent need to make the inputs at the Industrial Training Institutes, more better in terms of not only updating them, but also making them more tuned to current realities and requirements of the industry. It is also important that the process of education in the Industrial Training Institutes is made more richer in terms of content, so that the products can easily pass the Diploma in Engineering course in Mechanical, Civil, Electrical and so on, after three years of experience.
Some organizations like Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, actually encourage the ITI products to do such courses on a part-time basis, and it is only with the help of the organizations that the workmen are able to make a big dent in terms of upgrading their skill.
In the cement industry, there exists several learning centers, where the employees learn every single operation not only guidance from the superiors, but also through several class room sessions, where the background and the conceptual details are taught in great detail. In fact, at the macro level, the cement organizations will do well to organize a consortium where they can get together the best of minds and offer consultancy to several organizations that have been set up in different parts of the developing world. In this manner, the expertise of the cement industry can be shared.
The IT industry has its own learning centers. However, the huge organizations like the Infosys Technologies, which have done well to initiate the Campus to Corporate program, with an emphasis on teaching the teachers in engineering colleges, what they need to do to equip the students with the skills needed. Not in the least is the command over the written and spoken English language. However, the so-called "finishing" schools, which have sprung up in various parts of the country, are not doing a great job -- they are mere money making machines.
The National Skill Development Corporation needs to chip in with the result-oriented modules and the agencies that will be really interested in helping the students equip themselves with the numerous kills required. The urban-rural divide is a very big challenge. What is urgently required is that the students in the rural and semi-urban areas are really trained well.
Similarly, what is now lacking among hundreds of thousands of graduates in arts and science, throughout the country, is the lack of job opportunities, since the training that they receive is very much inadequate. There are some job openings in the Business Process Outsourcing sector, but the graduates are, by and large, very inadequate.
One of the alternatives is to train these raw graduates in skills needed in tourism, in the hotel industry, in the handicrafts and so on, through professionals employed in each of these places. Through appropriate public-private partnerships, the process of training them can be taken up on a very urgent, and priority basis. Once the training is in place, the job opportunities can be easily created. For example, they can trained as tourist guides. Such jobs are always there, for the asking.
One of the most important training and skill-oriented training also needs to be focused on the not-so-educated and the uneducated. For instance, those who are just matriculates, can be trained as drivers and appropriate jobs can be arranged through the Government itself, through the quasi-Government agencies, so that the corruption that exists in the recruitment of such trained people, comes down drastically.
Making the entire country a skilled country, is no more a choice. It is an imperative. We all need to be involved and we need to understand the larger scope of each type of training, The action needs to initiated at various levels.
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