Readers of this column who have been patient enough (and kind enough) to stay with it may have noticed that I tend to come back to some topics now and again. Well, spoiler alert: this column is once again about our signal failure to take advantage of our demographic dividend — create enough jobs for the estimated one million young men and women who enter the labour force every month and ensure that these people have the education, training, and skills to do those jobs.
The biggest challenge
If I am beginning to sound a bit obsessed with this, it is because I am convinced that all the dreams that Prime Minister Narendra Modi painted in 2014 for an aspiring nation — achhe din , making India great again (he said it first, even if in not as many words) — will happen if we can crack this. Creating adequate jobs, and employable labour for those jobs, remains the biggest challenge of the economy.
And, I dare say, our polity. Because these million young men and women starting out on their life’s journey every month are not merely looking for subsistence; they are hungry for a new and better life. Their aspirations have already been unleashed — by Modi, by Mukesh Ambani’s free smartphones and data plans, by the big wide world they have suddenly been connected to.
And they won’t wait forever to get it. As Airtel’s broadband ad said prophetically a few years ago, for the new India’s youth, “impatience is the new life”. If their aspirations are not met, they are not going to sit quiet and fatalistically accept it. We haven’t had youth in the streets since Mandal, and that was only in a handful of north Indian States. That agitation fundamentally changed the face of politics and power in our country. Just imagine what a nationwide agitation can do.
I think the Prime Minister knows this. That is probably the reason why he has put one of his better-performing Ministers in charge of skill development, arguably the biggest challenge in the way of India becoming well and truly a middle-income country.
That doesn’t look like it is happening any time soon. Currently, the whole skills mission is a train wreck. The National Skill Development Corporation, the nodal body set up under the United Progressive Alliance and empowered by the National Democratic Alliance with a new Ministry to back it, is in a mess. Many of the skilling and training centres it helped fund have been beset by fraud and mismanagement. Its skilling targets — constantly revised downwards and now practically dropped — have missed milestone after milestone. Most of the loans it doled out initially have turned non-performing assets. And most worryingly, those getting skilled and certified are not getting jobs.
The Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana, now in its second iteration, is above target as far as enrolment of candidates is concerned: against the target of over 10 lakh enrolments for 2017-18, it has already passed the 9 lakh mark, but a mere 78,854 candidates (as of September 8) have actually been placed in jobs. Overall, the Confederation of Indian Industry says the economy created about 3.8 million jobs over the past three years — just about enough to absorb four months’ worth of labour inflow.
Fixing basics
Can Dharmendra Pradhan, the new Skills Minister, fix this? He can’t pull off a miracle by 2019, but he could start by fixing a few basics.
The first is to comprehensively review the skills curriculum. One of the reasons for the miserable placement record is that we are creating skills in sectors where jobs are not being created. There is no point training lathe operators when factories have already been robotised. He needs to review and create appropriate skilling programmes in areas where jobs are, or are likely to be, created.
The second is to clean up the skilling partners programme. The system has been hopelessly gamed, with fixers and politically connected entities now grabbing a majority of the funding, leaving genuine professionals in the lurch. He needs to weed out the fraudsters, and focus on building stable, long-term partnerships with the private sector.
The third is to professionalise and formalise the informal skilling system. Most of the plumbers, carpenters, and mechanics in the country have learnt their skills from traditional ‘ ustads ’. Their role needs to be recognised with formal support and even funding, their skills upgraded with a ‘train the trainers’ programme, and their pupils formally certified. The third priority should be to build a national tools bank, to equip the skilled with tools so that they can become self-employed rather than job-seekers. The bank can microfinance tool purchase, and even lend from an inventory of tools on a daily or weekly basis at nominal sums.
Finally, he needs to ensure that Modi backs him in ensuring that all the 22 Ministries which play some role in skilling work towards the same goal. In this, the new Labour Minister, Santosh Kumar Gangwar, can be a big help. The new labour code, passed by the Cabinet, needs to become law and he has to ensure that a conducive environment and adequate opportunities are created in the sectors where skilled labour is being produced. Otherwise, we are all in trouble.
