photo credit : ORF
- India has been witnessing a youth bulge which will continue for next few decades until the growth trend is expected to stagnate and eventually decrease in the latter half of the 21st century due to global decline in fertility rate. According to the report of World Population Review, India is placed on the lower-middle part of the scale of fertility rate whereas Europe is at the low level of the scale. A report by Lancet suggests the average number of children born to a woman (TFR) in India, has been declining over the last century, with the fertility rate falling from 6.18 children per woman in 1950 to a projected 1.29 children per woman by 2050.
Nevertheless, India is now not only the country with highest population of the world, in the midst of many developed economies already witnessing an aging and decaying population, the country has been witnessing a sustained population growth, although at a lower level than before, which is likely to continue for next few decades and more favourably, its young, productive and working-age people significantly outnumber the rest. India enjoys a clear advantage of demographic dividend and according to a recent report at least 179 million people will be added to its working-age population by 2045.
The opportunities as well as challenges are innumerable for the country to train, upskill and incorporate the young population into its economy. The consecutive Indian governments under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi have led the people to believe that India is going to be a developed economy by 2047- by the hundredth year of its independence. By the sheer fact of large size of its workforce, market and Gross Domestic Product (GDP), India is the fifth largest economy of the world. On the other side of the coin, lack of adequate skills, technological knowledge and training make the problem of unemployment worse among large sections of youth which could not only impede the India’s growth trajectory, the country could be a breeding ground for the phenomenon of incessant brain-drain (home talents looking for opportunities abroad), migration (people looking for low skill jobs abroad) and it could be more dependent on others. Wars, instabilities and disruptions in supply chains in the global arena make it more pertinent that India absorbs its youth bulge into its economy making it more diversified and self-reliant. Increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cyber technologies by countries to sabotage the critical infrastructure of other countries and in conducting warfare is a call for India to upgrade these technologies with the use of its human capital for the defence of its sovereignty and territorial integrity. Developing these cutting-edge technologies would require more investment in the Research and Development (R&D) and better infrastructure in which India fares very poor compared with many developed economies. Another area which requires more focused attention is skill development in the areas of agriculture and agro-based industries as despite the higher contribution of service and manufacturing sectors towards India’s GDP, agricultural sector provides employment to a greater section of population.
Persisting Concerns of Unemployment
Notwithstanding this demographic dividend, persistent concerns have been expressed by economists as the unemployment rate in India kept rising. For instance, it rose to 5.4% in the 2022-23 fiscal year compared to 4.9% in 2013-14 before Modi took over as per government estimates. Even while the subsequent governments led by Prime Minister Modi have enhanced spending on roads, bridges and other infrastructure in a bid to boost the economy and create jobs and introduced make-in India and skills enhancement projects among youth to make the country’s economy more self-reliant, unemployment still persisted even increased as a pressing concern.
The concerns of unemployment was linked to the traditional education system as unemployment among the educated youth was found to be higher compared to people with a little and no education. The conventional wisdom that higher education brings with it better job opportunities was contradicted by facts. Data released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI) in the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) laid bare these grim facts. For instance, PLFS data for the year 2023-24 bear testimony to the fact that unemployment rate for individuals aged 15 and above with secondary education or higher is 6.5% compared to meagre 0.2% for those who are not literate and 1.4% for those who have only completed up to middle school. Further, unemployment rate among educated youth is higher in urban areas. In 2023-24, the unemployment rate for this section in urban areas was 7.9%compared to 6.5% in rural areas. Compared with government estimates, some recent estimates by private organisations projected the youth unemployment rate in India reaching as high as more than 40 percent of the population. For instance, the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) projected youth unemployment in India standing at 44 percent in the last quarter of 2023.
Pointing to the gender dimensions of skill development, the Global Skills Gaps Measurement and Monitoring Report of ILO 2023 indicated that 47% of Indian workers, especially 62% of females are underqualified for their jobs.
While it has long been a contention among the scholars that the traditional education system has been ill-equipped to raise and harness the requisite skills required by the globalised technology-driven economy as theoretical understanding of subjects is given undue significance and formed the cognitive basis of an individual in the mainstream education system, the father of Indian nation Mahatma Gandhi long back proposed embedding vocational education with mainstream learning.
If the demographic dividend is not harnessed and reaped carefully by the government of India, the country can neither fulfill its own growing industrial needs nor can it take advantage of aging and decaying population in other advanced economies. Skilled and productive workforce will not only drive innovation and increase productivity, but it will also significantly contribute to the overall competitiveness of the Indian economy.
Scholars have pointed to divergent factors contributing to the dismal employment scenario in India such as missing of vocational training mainstream education, lack of industry-ready skills in professional courses, high school dropout rates, and lack of requisite infrastructure and funds. However, unemployment may persist even while these concerns are met because the government’s initiatives to impart skills and training people have not been able to sway people towards the schemes and these have clearly failed to meet the targets.
Initiatives at Skill Development
Vocational education was imparted not as part of mainstream education but it ran parallel to the mainstream learning in India. There are around ten thousand schools imparting 150 vocational courses of two-year duration in broad areas of the primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors of the economy.
The National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) also imparts vocational education in 80 courses. However, total enrolment in these courses has been very low in sharp contrast to developed economies as some statistics pointed to the glaring fact that India’s youth receiving vocational education and formal skills development education varied from only 3 to 4 percent whereas more than fifty percent of youth in the United States, around eighty percent in Japan, and almost all in South Korea received such education.
For instance, while the data released by National Sample Survey Organisation Employment-Unemployment Survey (NSSO EUS) put out the sordid statistics that only 2.2% of the workforce in India had received formal Vocational training in 2011-12, the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data brought out the statistics to have touched 3.7% in 2022-23.
Exemplifying dearth in Skill Development in India, the World Economic Forum (WEF) report drove home the imperative to address and bridge the skills gap in India’s workforce. In one of its recent reports, it put out grim statistics that out of the 13 million people who join the workforce per year, only one-fourth of the management professionals, one-fifth of engineers, and one-tenth of graduates are employable.
To meet the inadequacies of formal Vocational training, the National Skill Development Mission (SDM) and National Policy on Skill Development and Entrepreneurship were launched by the government to address the problem of the very low level of skill development among the youth. SDM was implemented through schemes such as Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana (DDUGKY) and the National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (NAPS), to address employability gaps.
With the technological revolution in the Indian economy, industries are in the search of people possessing a raft of skills alongside digital knowledge including soft skills like communication, critical thinking, problem-solving, along with life skills like leadership, teamwork, emotional intelligence and conflict management. These skill sets also need to be constantly updated through training, reskilling and upskilling.
In this context, while a significant number of Skill Development Certificate /Degree Courses have been launched, the duration of these courses were too short to train and upskill people. Second, the skills that were designed to be imparted were mostly for low and middle level skills and not included the technological skills required for higher level positions, third, courses failed to reach out to train enough individuals and meet the targets while the statistics were inflated by leaders in their rhetoric. Fourth, budget apportioned towards the courses never reached the destination. Fifth, value and credibility of these courses were looked upon by the employers with skepticism as doubts persisted as regards the sincerity and seriousness of training providers and assessment agencies.
Skills development under PMKVY- Skill India Mission’s flagship programme were not only short term, the resultant employability of the programme has been low. Statistics reveal that the placement rate for PMKVY 1.0 is 18.4%, PMKVY 2.0 is 23.4, and PMKVY 3.0 is 10.1%. Much in a similar vein, the National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (NAPS), which was launched by the government of India on August 19, 2016 utterly failed to meet its target of apprenticeship training as only 20 lakh apprentices could be trained by 2022 while the target was to train 50 lakh apprentices by 2020. With a whopping amount of Rs 10,000 crore apportioned towards the scheme only roughly about Rs 650 crore were disbursed to the states between the period of 2017 to 2022.
Skill Enhancement Through National Education Policy (NEP)
In light of the growing new skill requirements from industries and low performances of vocational training and skill generation schemes, an imperative of reforming the mainstream education system aiming to align academic curricula with demands from industries was deemed necessary. This drive resulted in National Education Policy, 2020 which sought to bring vocational training and skill development programs to the mainstream curricula with the objectives of equipping the students with practical and job-ready skills.
It has been argued by scholars that courses under NEP apart from focusing on enhancing communication skills, these have been steadfastly designed to promote scientific and data-based thinking, creativity and innovation, values of aesthetics and art, health and fitness, wellness, sports, collaboration and teamwork, and problem-solving and logical reasoning. The new courses facilitate learning of behavioural skills like resilience, agility, innovation and adaptability which are vital to employability in various industries. Acquisition of these qualities and skills will not only enable individuals to meet various requirements of employment in multifarious sectors, this will equally enable individuals to harness their existing skills in the emerging market scenario. Looking at the current industrial requirements, NEP focuses on technical education in the emerging areas of Artificial Intelligence (AI), 3-D machining, big data analysis, machine learning, genomic studies, biotechnology, nanotechnology, neuroscience by integrating these subjects into undergraduate education.
However, NEP incorporates a multiple exit structure with certificates. This implies that students can choose to leave these skill enhancement courses midway through rupturing their learning and training curve with certificates. Their ability to develop critical thinking stops short of maturing. With their half-skilled qualifications, the students will be unable to get into top-notch jobs in the knowledge economy.
Some scholars argue that considering the low budgetary allocations by the Central Government towards education, transformations in the landscape of skills that has been envisaged by NEP within a decade are far from realities.
NEP allows the private Higher Educational Institutions to set their own fees for their programmes. However, they have a social responsibility to provide free education to 20 percent and scholarships to 30 percent of students which will incentivize the bright students of poor backgrounds to opt for private education but redistribution of funding within the public education realm through increased inclusion of private players would lead to squeezing of capital for many government scholarships for minority and backward classes.
Policy Suggestions
- There is a need for Increased Governmental Contribution to Skill Development Schemes and NEP and more budget needs to be allocated towards the sector of Education in general.
- There is a need for better and quality infrastructure to implement NEP and other vocational and skills development courses.
- More emphasis should be laid upon skills associated with modernizing agriculture and agro-based industries as the major chunk of the population still gets employment from the agricultural sector.
- The Central and State governments must ensure that the central government’s capital apportioned towards the skill enhancement schemes has reached the targeted individuals.
- The state governments must participate keenly for the development of these courses as Education is a subject in the Concurrent List of the Constitution where both governments can legislate and implement laws relating to development of skills.
- The Central Government must ensure that the courses must not be too short to instill and train people in requisite development of skills.
- Credibility of Trainers and Assessment Agencies must be thoroughly verified by government to make the courses more authentic and increase the employability of individuals.
- Focus on enhancement of high skills such as AI, cybersecurity and robotic technologies needs to be further emphasized. In this context, collaboration with developed countries and their universities becomes a priority and more emphasis needs to be laid on Research and Development with more budgetary allocations towards these objectives.
- While involving the private players, the government must ensure that the students from poor socio-economic backgrounds are not deprived of necessary government support for learning new skills.
- Government must ensure that more capital from private and philanthropic actors are diverted to upskilling more and more people who live in rural India with backward socio-economic backgrounds. Otherwise, the entire skill learning exercise becomes elitist by nature.