India At Crossroads With Increasing But Unskilled Workforce

"If China is known as world's manufacturing factory, India can be world's human resource capital," said Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the launch of National Skill Development Mission, an ambitious programme by the government to train millions of Indians by 2022.

Recently, World Bank has cleared $250 million loan for making Indian youth more employable through re-skilling, a move which can aid Modi’s dream of making India, world’s human resource capital.

However, the country is currently standing at crossroads where on one hand youths re-entering the labour market looking for jobs and on the other, industries are complaining of lack of appropriately skilled manpower. This reflects the criticality of skill development to enhance employability. Thereby, proper use of funds (cleared by World Bank) becomes more crucial.

In an exclusive interview to BW Businessworld, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Union minister of State Skill Development and Entrepreneurship accepted the lack of skill among India’s workforce saying, “Education, research, scientific achievements will see inventions, but the application has to be by someone skilled. The second part was not addressed in the history of India. At best, it was on an ad hoc basis.”

Acknowledging the integrality of skill development, there has been a steady increase in the allocations made for this sector over the years. The allocation for skill development has risen sharply from Rs 1129.62 crore in 2012–13 to Rs 2549.29 crore in 2015–2016.

The 2017 union budget, saw a quantum jump in funds with Rs 4000 crores being allocated for skill acquisition and knowledge awareness under the Sankalp programme.

India’s transition to a superpower is only possible when India gets rid of unemployment by becoming more employable. Arun Jaitley rightly said at an event of Skill India, "When Make in India and Skilling India will converge; no doubt we would have a great future ahead of us."