Skills Can Result in Jobs Only If India Stops Losing Talent Post Training "As the Indian economy is growing, we hope skills get the respect they deserve."
By Aashika Jain
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
Skilling India is one of the top agendas of the Narendra Modi-led government. There arises no doubt this challenging task would need the support of industry players.
Aimed at skilling 150 million Indians by 2022, the National Skill Development Corporation is a public private partnership mandated to involve the private sector.
In a chat with Entrepreneur, the Electronics Sector Skills Council of India Chief Narendra Mohapatra, revealed the not-for-profit organization's target to train close to 40 lakh youth in electronics in 5 years.
His main worry is India losing its talent post training them. Can the country find a solution to this menace? Mohapatra suggests 5 ways.
Make Teaching Output-based
What has happened is that conventionally formal or vocational education has become input-based. We are now following Nationals Qualification Framework. This is more outcome based and it's more of a what you can do after the training. It is an output-measurement mode. So we give a lot of flexibility on the input mode. We suggest a lot of things but do not fix the input mode as seriously.
It is not about teaching, it is about giving you the confidence that you can deliver a job.
How I teach you driving is not important, how I make you drive the car correctly is important. All the old methodology was on how to teach better, the methodology.
We are now changing whole paradox of things, which is output based.
Standarize Efforts
What we look for is how to standardize all the efforts taken by all to improve the average framework of the country. We now have so many models to follow – Korea, Germany, Japan and China – along with so many good standards such as that of Switzerland.
We understand the importance of vocational education now. The only mistake we made is we kept vocational education away from industry. We thought we study here, go there. This has to be interactive such as training, internships.
Leave Legacy Behind
Our education policy which was formed when British left India was not to make us capable; to make us dependent on something. Why is the highest paid job or highest respected job is an IAS officer? Because that is the British legacy says the IIT graduate.
In other countries, who cares about a government administration job? In our country we feel it is the most respected job; that's because of the legacy left behind.
Time will change. IT industry has shown it, every trade will show its worth. Automobile industry is showing it right now. In another 10-15 years, things will change.
Consult Industry
We don't build any curriculum without consulting the industry. So there is no way in which they can tell us we are not doing it right. The input comes from the industry.
At ESCCI, we make the curriculum to deliver country standard, we have third party training partners who also help in certification assessment. We control the whole eco space by defining standards, delivering standards and monitoring the deliveries in terms of quality assurance following parameters.
Many companies, training providers and universities are partnering with us along with government funding.
Skill India is good as a campaign, but at the ground level sectorally we have to do good work with the industry. We have to move with the industry rightly. We see lot more opportunity for India to produce global jobs rather than local jobs. So, whenever government talks, the government doesn't think so much about global jobs. Corporates think about global jobs. We have to mix and match.
Blend Localization With Globalization
Government is pushing us with incentives, lot of money towards subsidies to standardize these courses and syllabus. Now it is up to us to mix global with local. Benchmarking helps us. Government enthusiasm wise, incentive wise things are pretty positive right now.
Why an electrician from Tamil Nadu and a nurse from Kerala has gone to Middle East? Because they are better paid. Today nurses in Kerala have been replaced by north eastern girls with the same skill set. So it in an immigration market, you lose your talent to another country, your state is filled up with another state. This story can't continue for long, we got to bring job parity and respect for people who are doing skill-based job.
