Resource supplier to the world
THE Indian Navy Sailing Vessel (INSV) Tarini left the shores of Cape Town for its home port of Goa in India on Wednesday, leaving in its wake legions of fans, admirers and friends.
The six #TariniGirls turned out to be outstanding brand ambassadors of India, winning hearts wherever they went and capturing the imagination of all they met.
Rightfully, their last engagement in the Mother City, a day before they set sail for the Mother Country, was interaction with the students of UWC, paying in the process a fitting tribute to the institution’s history of “creative struggle against oppression, discrimination and disadvantage”.
Both India and South Africa have a shared history of similar struggle against oppressors, ably helmed by Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela respectively. Though this struggle culminated for India in 1947 and South Africa in 1994, a struggle for a better and more equitable life for citizens of both the countries continues.
Opportunities of employment and employability of the citizens thus assumes immense significance to achieve this objective.
To illustrate the enormity of the challenge, 54% of India’s population is below 25 years of age and more than 62% of working age. Yet, less than 5% has undergone formal skills training.
By 2025, almost one in five of the world’s working age population (18.3%) will be Indian.
Recent skills gap reports suggest that more than 109 million incremental human resources will be required in India alone, across 24 key sectors, by the year 2022.
The bigger the challenge, the better the opportunity.
Realising this, a multisectoral and multidimensional approach addressing issues of supply and demand, employability and industry connect has been adopted to make India truly a human resource supplier to the world.
India started addressing this issue in earnest with the setting up of the National Skill Development Corporation India, a public-private initiative, in 2009.
The initiative gained further momentum when India’s first integrated National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship was announced in July 2015. Prime Minister Nahendra Modi turned this into a national goal to be achieved in mission mode by launching the “Skill India” campaign, with the avowed objective of turning India into the “Skill Capital of the World”.
Skill India serves as a cradleto-grave facilitator by imparting government-funded, industry-relevant skill training, recognising or updating prior learning, certification, as well as placements. This has been successful to a large extent in addressing the supply-demand mismatch in employable skills.
Another scheme – the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (Prime Minister’s People’s Money Plan) launched in August 2014 with an objective to “Bank the Unbanked” – served to form the financial basis in providing liquidity in the system for masses to pursue skills development and employment programmes.
Likewise, Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (Prime Minister Micro Units Development & Refinance Agency Ltd), launched in April 2015, served to “Fund the Unfunded” by facilitating loans to sections of the society that need these the most to achieve optimum utilisation of their skills.
Aiding the Skill India campaign was the “Stand Up India” scheme launched in April 2016 to promote entrepreneurship at grass-roots level for economic empowerment and job creation. The scheme seeks to leverage the institutional credit structure to reach out to the underserved sector of the people, including women. The Stand-Up India scheme serves to facilitate bank loans between 1 million (R181 250) and 10 million Indian rupees to disadvantaged sections of the society for setting up a greenfield enterprise. (Green field, in this context, signifies the first-time venture of the beneficiary in the manufacturing or service or trading sector.)
More recently, in October 2017, two new World Bank-supported schemes -– Skills Acquisition and Knowledge Awareness for Livelihood Promotion (Sankalp) and Skill Strengthening for Industrial Value Enhancement (Strive) – were launched. Both of these are outcome-focused schemes, marking a shift in the government’s implementation strategy in vocational education and training from inputs to results.
The schemes intend to address the need for proper architecture for promoting convergence, ensuring effective governance and regulation of skill training and catalysing industry efforts in vocational training space by setting up national bodies for accreditation and certification.
Several private sector companies have also jumped on the bandwagon with their own skills development programme, incentivised by the government and aided by suitable financial infrastructure in place. To name a few, TATA Strive, IL&FS Skills, Art of Living Skills Development, etc have been doing a stellar job in providing a skilled workforce to the industry.
India has also built on robust relationships with countries like Japan, Germany, Switzerland, the UK, the US, Australia, etc with a purpose of technology transfer in skill training, training of trainers, setting up of model and centres of excellence, etc.
A sustainable partnership has to involve both inward as well as outward flow of skills and expertise. This objective has been very well served through the vehicle of the Indian Technical and Economic Co-operation (Itec) programme which has been in operation since 1964 as a bilateral programme of assistance of the Government of India.
Under Itec and its sister programme, Scaap (Special Commonwealth African Assistance Programme), 161 countries in Asia, Africa, East Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean as well as Pacific and Small Island countries have collaborated with India in the sharing of technical know-how and expertise as well as training opportunities, consultancy services and feasibility studies. The IItec/Scaap programme includes components like training in India of nominees from Itec partner countries, deputation of Indian experts abroad, study tours, besides a host of other features. Itec not just helps in training of the workforce in the partner country, but also in long-term and sustainable capacity building through the creation of suitable institutions.
Itec has been an important bulwark of co-operation between India and South Africa. The objective is to enhance the programme for South Africa, both in its scope and intensity, and contribute to development efforts in South Africa. The success and durability of the Itec programme is self-evident in the partner countries. Itec alumni are our brand ambassadors, just like #TariniGirls.
Shukla is Consul-General of India in Cape Town