The Secretary said that Sector Skill Councils (SSCs) were created to harmonize the demand for skilled workers required by the industry and the skilling needed to suffice that demand. The platform required the private sector to aggregate the demand of the industry and provide the information to the government for undertaking skilling of workforce in the right skill, right number and right quality. However, there are still gaps in this area.
Nandan said that the government had handed over the entire skilling ecosystem to the private sector and it was now its responsibility to benchmark the standards and train the workforce accordingly and make them employable not just within India but also overseas. The Secretary assured that the government would continue to fund the various skilling programmes and urged industry to allocate a part of its CSR funds towards skilling. He added that such spending would be accounted for against CSR and the industry would also receive 25% subsidy on the amount spent on skilling.
The Secretary said that the new wave of development was riding on robotics and would leave many jobs redundant. However, the space of robot designing, production, software, electronics could be the explored to create new job opportunities. If India is able to anticipate the future job scenario then the country would be ready to take the lead in this area like it did in IT sector.
Nandan said that it was critical to benchmark Indian standards in accordance with international markets. Therefore, India had adopted the standards of the UK and Australia in some sectors that are acceptable throughout the world. He also highlighted the various initiatives take up by the government such as creation of NSDC, skilling agencies, allocation of funds for giving the right momentum to Skill India movement.
On the occasion, a FICCI-KPMG Report on ‘Re-engineering the skill ecosystem’and a FICCI-NASSCOM Study on ‘The Future of Jobs’ were released by the Secretary and other dignitaries.
Onno Ruhl, Country Director – India, The World Bank, said that it was imperative to provide a healthy environment to a child right from birth to the formative years as a healthy person was bound to give better productivity. Hence, ‘Swachh Bharat’ initiative was one of the key drivers for creating a productive labour workforce. He added that the benefits of skilling and other such government initiatives should focus primarily on socially-excluded people as it would enhance economic competitiveness as well. Also, India needed to improve the share of women workforce as it has been declining for the last decade.
Mohan Das Pai, Chairman, FICCI Skill Development Committee, Chairman Manipal Global Education, said that India’s economy currently is in the midst of a structural transformation. As the transition progresses towards being a modern skills-based economy focused on manufacturing and services, away from being rural and agrarian, many are being left behind. This divide would further increase with fourth industrial revolution knocking at our doors, where technological disruption like Internet of Things, automation, 3D Printing, Robotics etc. would make certain jobs disappear while at the same time create new jobs with requirement of higher order skills. There is clearly a need to interlink current and future skills needed, training imparted and availability of jobs and relate it to sector, geography and demography. Hence, re-engineering the skill ecosystem to match current and future skills is critical for India.
R Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM, while sharing details about the FICCI-NASSCOM initiative on Mapping Future of Jobs said that ICT was impacting every sector and the demand and supply side of workforce. There was a need to leverage ICT and identify new and additional skills that would be required in future. ‘Agility, scale and speed’ are key to drive the skilling agenda. Besides, skilling new workforce, there is a need for continuous skilling of the employed workforce to match the changing pace of business, he said.
Vikramjit Singh Sahney, President/CEO Sun Group, said that 21st century is the time for ITIs to acquire global recognition for producing skilled manpower. Youth must be equipped with the right skills and emphasis should be on entrepreneurship. ‘Be skilled, be independent, be empowered’ should be the slogan for future India.
Launching the new initiative ‘UberSHAAN’, Amit Jain, President, Uber India, said that Uber was committed fully support the government’s Skill India and entrepreneurship building initiatives. With UberSHAAN, the plan is to rapidly scale India’s entrepreneurial base and generate one million livelihood opportunities on the Uber platform by 2018.
L R Sridhar, Co-Founder, CEO & MD, Connect India E-commerce Services Pvt Ltd, said that the aim of Connect India drive is to connect villages by creating a pervasive network and employ the underutilized resources of the government wherever available and feasible to develop the last mile connectivity ecosystem.
Sanjay Vijaykumar, Chairman Startup Village, launched the second phase of Startup Village, India’s first PPP model incubator which is heralding a student startup revolution across the country. The initiative is to arm the youth to acquire knowledge on online platforms and helping unleash their creativity to build disruptive startups that will become generational companies of the future.
In his concluding remarks and vote of thanks, Bijay Sahoo, Co-Chair, FICCI Skill Development Committee, President-HR, Reliance Industries Ltd., said that it was imperative that that we equip our youth with life skills that are adaptable to the rapidly evolving 21st century society. Therefore, the summit aims to take a deeper look at the present skill ecosystem, map them against the future trends, identify future jobs and skill requirements and propose a way to re-engineer the skill ecosystem to make required course corrections.
Image Courtesy: The Hindu Business Line