Challenges of ‘Skilling' India

India enjoys a demographic dividend where more than 60 percent of its population is in the working age group. The youth bulge presents an opportunity for India to enhance its growth and also supply skilled manpower to the rest of the world. According to a World Bank report, this is because India’s working age population will be more than the dependent population for at least three decades till 2040

- KN Pathak

The National Higher Education Commission in its report has estimated that by 2020 the average age of Indians will be 29 years as against 40 years in the USA, 46 years in Europe and 47 years in Japan. It is also estimated that during the next 20 years, the labour force in the industrial world is expected to decline by 4%, while in India it will increase by 32%.

However, India is facing a paradoxical situation where on the one hand young men and women are looking for jobs and on the other industries are complaining of unavailability of appropriately skilled manpower. This paradox reflects the criticality of skill development to enhance the employability of the growing young population and also to gear up the economy to realise the target of faster and inclusive growth. However, keeping in view the heterogeneity of the labour market and also the preponderance of the unorganised sector; designing a model which should benefit the key players of the ecosystem – the employer, the training provider, the trainee and the Government – is a challenging task.

It is a known fact that 93% of the total labour force is in the unorganised sector of India. Thus, the major challenge of skill development initiatives is also to address the needs of a vast population of Indians by providing them skills which would make them employable and enable them to secure decent work leading to improvement in the quality of their life.