Union Budget 2020: How the Budget can help with Shortage of skill sets

By Kamal Dutta

"2019 was a challenging year for many businesses. The war of talent continued but the narrative was of more around lack of jobs and while it is not easy to explain this contradiction, getting the right skills, at the right time, for the right role got more challenging while graduates lacking hard and soft skills found dearth of opportunities. Lack of skills was evident in new age digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Cloud Computing. Shortage of these skill sets can be met by the govt. developing guidelines for various industries in order to create mandatory learning hours for employees, especially in the key growth sectors like IT, BFSI sectors. The government should provide some support in the form of incentivizing companies investing in the reskilling, upskilling of their workforce for the digital age. With the shortage of skilled workforce in the deep tech sector, reskilling of employees in AI, ML, IoT will help grow India's IT sector and sharpen its competitive edge amidst the changing business landscape. There should also be some attractive tax reliefs/benefits for individuals investing in their own training and development. Introduction of more industry specific and customized skill development programs like the 'Skill India' can help organizations acquire, retain and grow their talent base which will ultimately help these grow their capabilities and reshape India’s skilling and reskilling landscape. The ultimate benefit will be to the young and growing Indian population to secure respectable jobs, strengthen their career path and continuously keep learning to stay updated and ahead of the curve."

(The writer, Kamal Dutta is the MD India for Skillsoft)