India needs to get skilled at tapping skills at a young age for the right market demand. Hundreds of foreign companies, including over 200 firms from the United States (as reported in the media), are planning to set up their manufacturing bases and are ready to invest heavily in India after booting out of China. Now, a gigantic challenge awaits the nation in supplying the required skilled manpower for the prospective industries.
With an opportunity offered after corona, India, with its honest and laborious human resource available, can be the new skill bazaar for the world. But we are not yet ready with the basics and the required skill force. But it’s not a mission impossible either. Skilling can be done on war footing and first and foremost, we must come out of seeing skilling as a government scheme and out of the mindset of just opening a computer training shed or a nursing training center. Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid a special thrust to build a “skilled India”. For which the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) has taken many steps to hone talent and train youth to meet the demands of the industry, including for some exceptional talent to find their career prospects overseas. But now the urgency is to skill on a mass scale to meet the upcoming foreign companies’ demand and it calls for a shift in existing standard operating procedures.
Millions of workers will be required for the industries in India, including a large number of engineers and technicians, besides supervisors. Innovation, integrity and pro-activeness, hunger to learn and earn, will hold the key for millions of high school students who will be identified in a mission mode to make this happen. This is no less than raising an army for a war. And as it happens in the barracks before a war, the new skill force selected for training must also go through the regimental routine of eight-hour work schedule and the selection criteria must be based on the need to join from household and high aspiration so that mission meets its big picture objective. Strict rules during the training will give them a sense of discipline and fixing their wages to at least 10% higher than the minimum daily wages of casual labour will give them a sense of pride. Further, this will give them a skilled identity in their own neighbourhoods to attract more.
We must first identify the prospective trades from where the maximum skill force will be demanded and start training the idle and unutilized human resources India possesses accordingly with no delay. Those responsible for the skill hunting must know the fact that we don’t need highly qualified people for the upcoming demand. Instead, the new skill mission must be tapping 95% of the required force in the high schools of rural and semi-urban areas. However, my interaction with the industry also exposes the gap between what we are producing and what the industry needs. Nearly 95% of the trained work force required must be just 10th class or high school pass. About 4% supervisors are needed to train the young workforce and the remaining 1% must be qualified engineers to train the supervisors and oversee the works of the young skilled workforce.
The demand is coming now from infrastructure works, real estate sector, food processing, auto industry, mobile and computer hardware factories, and MSMEs. Apart from the training in respective trades, the new workforce must be taught across board about reading of engineering drawings and instruction, must have the basic English-language training and how to use simple tools as the real training on machines will start only after the company hires them. We must focus to make them factory-fit to deliver the right output.