JOIN USKudos to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy for having launched the national skills development plan called Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY). It is an initiative much needed since a long time. One of the yawning gaps that our country faces is the lack of trained skilled workers in various areas of activity.
To be fair to the past, this is not a new idea or a new programme. Almost 40 to 50 years ago, the Government of India had begun an ambitious programme of Industrial Training Institutes and Artisan Training Centres for special training of skilled young personnel to man the about to zoom industries. Down the following decades, this initiative slowed to such an extent that one stopped talking about it. It is really good that Modi revived it.
Several nations have large percentage of skilled personnel available – many in excess of 50 per cent; while India lags terribly at just 3 per cent. Therefore, PM has plans of having 40 crore skilled people in India by the year 2022. The number by itself seems a tall order. But, Modi cannot be faulted for thinking of less than grandiose plans. And for every plan or programme he has a ready slogan too. In the present case it is: “Kaushal Bharat, Kushal Bharat”.
But more than the numbers, what one may have to delve into is the ‘quality’ of the so-called skilled manpower. Will they be really “skilled” in the right sense of the word? Will these young skilled men and women be able to take on the challenging jobs in manufacturing or service industry? We have to keep in mind the rising global competition that all endeavours face. Whether we take our business abroad, or we conduct our business only within India, the global competition is after us even here in India. Will the skills training imparted be good enough to take on the world?
Industrial Training Institutes and similar programmes lost their initial steam decades ago because the said trained persons were not qualitatively good enough to meet the requirements of the industry. Remember, India was not open to global competition then; and most of the industries in India were in the public sector. There was little coordination between the requirements of the industry and what the institutes taught/trained.
Training was quite rudimentary and the industry had to prepare the youngster once again to meet their needs. When complex machining was the need, involving numerically controlled machines, the best of trainees was acquainted – not necessarily trained – with the basic and old, say, turning machines.
When the needs were of welders who could do fairly complex welding jobs like those on factory equipment or large water pipelines, the trainee was hardly trained to do an elementary job. Quality of training had been woefully inadequate to meet even the local requirements.
In India we – as a people - love to inundate ourselves in numbers. We are fixated in quantity because that is available to measure. Whereas, quality is difficult to evaluate. Numerical targets offer us an easy way to pat ourselves on the back. We talk about increasing numbers of our children getting school education. But we overlook the fact that over 50 per cent of our Standard 3 kids cannot properly recognise digits up to 100.
Over 50 per cent of Standard 5 children cannot read books of Standard 2; and only 25 per cent of kids of Standard 5 can do a simple division problem. Frankly, we have failed in our education plans and goals. The reasons of the lack of infrastructure, lack of funds, etc. are extraneous. We failed because we lacked focus, drive and commitment. In plain language, we have been lazy – at all levels, governmental and individual.
Well-trained needed
We have to get out of this slothful man’s syndrome. ‘Sheikh Mohammed’ the fictional character in Hindi folklore, truly represents us. Our plans are massive: 16 IITs, 15 IIMs and several more in the offing. Where will the faculty come from? Even higher education is worked out in a slipshod manner.
Coming back to the question of skilled workforce, we really need well-trained people in all spheres of activity. For example, take the area of nursing. The experience has been that even the so-called reputed corporate hospitals have nursing staff many of who find it difficult to distinguish between a vein and an artery while fixing a simple IV line on the wrist of a patient.
We have officially-recognised guides at important tourist spots who know so little about the monument/heritage site that it does not matter whether they know to speak in English for the benefit of the foreign tourist. Don’t they need some basic training?
More importantly, it seems our attitude towards work and ‘others’ needs to be trained. It needs to be drilled into us that any job needs to be done thoroughly. Street cleaner has to ensure that she does not just collect dried leaves – an easy job to do – but also removes the a dead rat or the excreta of dog if she/he were to find it.
Carpenter has to ensure that the kitchen cabinets he fixes today will stand firm for the next decade or more. Printer has to make sure that the edited manuscript is typeset and reproduced without any errors at the first time itself. It is better to have 10 crore professional and productive artisans, instead of 40 crore lacking in basic approach.
(The writer is former Professor, IIM-Bangalore)