Originally Published : NCAER, 2020
Introduction
Starting with Rabindra Nath Tagore’s quote from Gitanjali, “We have no time to lose, and having no time we must scramble for a chance.” The NCAER report- “Skilling India” offers insights into the skilling challenge faced by India. Policy makers in India face this three- fold challenge of creation of more well-paying jobs, creating efficient pathways for skill acquisition in India and matching the skills according to the job description. This also includes protecting low paid, low skilled workers through social security benefits. A large number of workers aged 30- 59 who are in the workforce but need to be reskilled or upskilled adds another layer to the challenges.
The report after thinking about the three types of skills- foundational, employability and entrepreneurial offers a framework for policymakers and other stakeholders to use to design, execute and evaluate the poor skilling conditions in the country. The report focuses on how India is going through the demographic dividend, which comes once in a nation’s life and thus argues that “India should grow rich before growing old”. The report provides a three-part framework of acquiring, matching, and anticipating skills provides a way of designing, executing, and evaluating policies and programmes to accelerate skilling India.
Key Highlights
1. About 1.25 millions workers aged 15-29 are projected to join workforce every month by 2022
2. Demographic dividend will be at peak in about 2040, so by 2022 India will have 47 million more people of working ages (15 – 59) than younger or older people
3. Nearly 70 million people will need skilling for the Indian economy by 2022
4. 92% of the workforce in India works in the informal sector, so nearly 468 million people in India will need upskilling
5. The unemployment rate for graduates aged 20–24 was 29%, for those 25–29, 12%, and for those 30–34, 4%
6. Out of the more than 500 thousand final year bachelor’s students aged 18–29 who were surveyed, 54% were found to be unemployable
7. 300 million Indians are currently in educational institutions or acquiring vocational skills and will be eventually looking for work
8. 68% of Indian SME businesses are offline, and another 15% are digitally connected but not using digital services. Only 2% marketed products or services online
9. Technology cycles are shorter than ever, and digital disruption could hit Indian workers hard: globally 75% of businesses expect that automation will require workers to develop new skills
10. India needs to adopt a three-part framework- acquiring, matching and anticipating skills for improving its skilling ecosystem
Read more: http://www.ncaer.org/uploads/photo-gallery/files/1541180541Skilling%20India%20Report.pdf
Author: Namrata Shokeen, PILOT at Pratham
