Demographic dividend and skilled society

Skilling, upskilling and reskilling to tackle the future, is what India’s demographic dividend requires to stop it from becoming a challenge in itself. While the country’s foremost technical institutes – the IITs - have made a name for themselves globally, our ITIs (Industrial Training Institutes) need to acquire similar global recognition for producing skilled quality manpower.

The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) and its flagship skill training initiative, the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), which is claimed to have trained close to 73 lakh of the country’s youth, has a robust approach towards developing a skill eco system.

Importantly, its functional arm, the National Skill Development Corporation, set up as a Public-Private Partnership company, catalyses the skills landscape through the 15,000-odd ITIs, funding skill initiatives and sustaining 38 industry-led Sector Skill Councils (SSC) in services, manufacturing, agriculture and allied services, and informal sectors.

There are 38 SSCs tasked with skilling on a large scale with speed and challenging targets. These are autonomous industry-led bodies that create standards, quality specifications, develop competency frameworks, conduct Train the Trainer Programmes and skill gap studies, and assess and certify trainees by aligning them to pan-country curriculum and standards.

Consider one of them for clarity of understanding, the Infrastructure Equipment Skill Council (IESC), set up to train over a million Operators and Mechanics in the next decade. In the five years of its existence, however, it has been able to train around 48,000 trainees through its 61 training centres and 500 certified trainers.

Mobilisation of potential trainees for undergoing training is a major issue for IESC. Today’s youth is highly aspirational, everyone wants a career plan, preferably not in the field where infrastructure equipment is deployed. So how to get sufficient numbers of qualified youngsters?

The MSDE runs the ITIs and one solution is to make it mandatory for students to attend IESC training programmes so that they acquire the requisite skills and pursue careers in this segment if it interests them.

Training assignments

Another way of making mobilisation aspirational is already being attempted by IESC by starting to undertake training assignments in West Asia. Trained and certified operators and mechanics are valued overseas and would result in overseas jobs and opportunities for India’s youth. Similarly, IESC is taking strides to equip women employees with these skill sets. Several women employees have started attending operator and mechanic training programmes widening their career horizon and opening up new avenues for themselves.

Why do existing operators and mechanics need to undergo IESC programmes in the first place? Driving a car or even a two-wheeler requires a licence whereas anyone can climb into the cabin of an expensive infrastructure machine and operate state of art equipment with its accompanying risks (including third party risks) to life and property. The nodal ministry should mandate only qualified operators, and mechanics can work on these expensive machines making it an offence to work without a suitable licence.

Insurance companies stand to gain when expensive infrastructure machines are operated by certified and skilled operators. It is in their interest to ensure insurance policies are issued only when the machine is operated by certified operators similar to insurance coverage of motor vehicles only when the driver has a licence. Similarly, finance companies and banks that finance the equipment should offer concessional interest rate when the machines are operated by skilled and certified operators. Skilled operation will ensure longer life and durability of the infrastructure equipment in question.

It is proving difficult for IESC to grow their collection of training partners to carry out mandated training programmes. Most private training partner associates find the training model non-viable because of the earnings disbursed under the flagship PMKVY scheme which are too paltry. It does not even cover the cost of diesel incurred by the partner to provide the machines for operator training.

It is necessary to augment work being done by MSDE through innovative thinking, tweaking insurance and finance companies, adapting their policies, encouraging skill certification and upgradation, even making licensing mandatory for infrastructure equipment leaving H S Mohan, the current CEO of IESC, who has his task cut out, to focus on mass mobilisation with quality training and certification.

The balance SSCs too have to ensure skill development to become the backbone of each ambitious programme by similarly ensuring mass mobilisation and quality standards in their respective sectors. Other high-growth industries that lack training instructors and facilities, such as logistics, healthcare, construction and hospitality must be encouraged to have vocationally trained workforces. Intertwined with the success of its youth, India’s demographic dividend must evolve into a skilled society where there is prosperity and dignity for all.

(The writer is a former Executive Director on the Board of BEML)