Focus on improving quality of education great move

Ms. Neeti Sharma, Senior Vice President, TeamLease Services.

Moving our economy from a $2 trillion economy to a $3 trillion economy by end of current fiscal year is a happy take away from the new budget announced today. The increased focus on improving overall quality of education by introducing new policy reforms, allocating 400 crores and creating world-class higher education institutions is great move to augment the ecosystem. With the economy growing every day and increasing employment opportunities, creating a highly skilled workforce has been the need of the hour. But unless skilling starts at the University level, it will be very difficult to achieve the government’s agenda of taking India's higher education system to global standards. Creating the National Research Foundation (NRF) is another great inclusion in the budget. This will provide the much needed focus on research at the University level as well.

The government’s efforts to increase skilled workforce in new technological areas such as AI, Big Data, and Robotics etc. is an appreciated effort. However, skills need to be developed across many other sectors such as Healthcare, Hospitality, BFSI, Retail and Automotive amongst many others. Convergence of the economic policy with skilling initiatives is imperative for generating skilled labor market entrants in the industry and this will also effectively help in bridging the gap between Education, Employability and Employment. The 10 million skilling target indicated under the PMKVY scheme should ensure that skills match with industry requirements.

Additionally creating a ‘Study in India’ program will help create awareness and open new avenues in the education sector. However, to emerge as a leading academic nation globally, we need to ensure the availability of relevant infrastructure, quality training programs, advanced research, upgraded technological intervention and trained teaching staff at both scale and geographical spread.

The author is the Senior Vice President of TeamLease Services.