Skilling, reskilling, and upskilling to prepare for the future of work
Just as the economy emerges from the second wave of Covid-19, it faces the dangers of the new variant — Omicron. In addition to strained infrastructure and workforces, one of the major economic disruptions caused by the pandemic is longterm job losses.
Last year, India recorded about 7.5% job losses during the lockdown. However, nearly 40% of the affected workforce couldn’t find a paying job even 10 months after the national lockdown in 2020, with this being more acute for the younger workforce in urban India, according to a report by London School of Economics and Political Science. Sixty-two per cent of the population falls in the working age group, yet India adds approximately 10 million new job seekers every year.
One of the major reasons for this employability gap is the shortage of a skilled workforce. India has the opportunity to become the next big economic growth story because of its demographic dividend. While creating jobs to meet the demand is critical, the agenda should be to focus on skilling, reskilling, and upskilling, which prepares the workforce for a technology-led, knowledge and innovation economy.
In this pursuit, we must ask: How can existing channels of skill development be made more efficient? What are the developments required to cater to this changing nature of work? How can the benefits of skilling on the economy and society be effectively realised?
First, the structural challenges of existing channels and institutions for skill development need to be identified and dealt with in a targeted manner. India’s five pillars of the skill training system are: Vocational education in schools; industrial training institutes (public and private); vocational training providers funded by the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC); appropriate ministries of the government; and private enterprises carrying out enterprise-based training. Enhancing the efficiency of these institutional mechanisms can be a major intervention.
Second, there is a need to shift from a supply-driven ecosystem to a demand-driven ecosystem — a shift that has failed to take off because of the lack of capacity and a centralised means of assessing the skill demand. This task, reflected in a National Skills Plan 20172022, was developed by the ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship (MSDE) in consultation with NSDC and sector skill councils (SSCs). This needs to be decentralised at the state and district levels to ascertain what the workforce demand will be in the coming years.
After this assessment, and ensuring capacity-building interventions for line departments and grassroots-level organisations, a holistic skill development road map can be effectively implemented.
Third, the focus should be on the resilience and sustainability of jobs created. The focus should be on ensuring how certain job roles — heavy-duty manual labour, cleaners, technicians and so on — can be automated while ensuring that the skill levels of people engaged in these jobs are enhanced.
Finally, the dominant narrative of economies of scale should be rethought. Having enterprises growing in size and scale as the only means of growth is detrimental to inclusivity. The focus should also be on ensuring how diverse types of products, engineering techniques, and skills can be used to help the economy grow horizontally. This is often termed as “economies of scope” — capitalising on the skills of the workforce to generate different products, instead of producing the same product in large volumes.
Nurturing localised skill sets and enabling these skills to translate into business ventures is imperative. The policy focus should be on the human element of the economy.
A robust and future-ready skill ecosystem is the need of the hour for the Indian economy. As India embarks on its mission to skill, reskill and upskill to keep up with the future of work, there are pending reforms that need to be fast-tracked so that we can reap the benefits of having a demographic dividend, a vibrant economy, and the growing attractiveness of India as a destination for investments.