India Talent Bazaar- Quality Crunch
Posted : January 31, 2006 at 10:06 pm [IST]
Half of the 1.2 billion population (60 million) of India is under 25. And that is the resource that can make India go ahead of other economies. But unfortunately, 40 million out of it are unemployed. India will require all categories - unskilled to work as menial labour, semi-skilled for manning repetitive operations as factory workers, skilled to solve the problems such as maintenance work and build value as required in building moulding tools and dies, and high skilled to work out on innovations and conceptualisations such as design works. Normally, the number of people required in categories from unskilled to high skilled gradually reduces for any institution, factory or nation depending on the nature of the business. But an effective education system can reverse the number and that becomes the target for a developed country. Even a person working for a job requiring no skill, with education can contribute in improving the process or the product. Effective education is universally desirable.
Unfortunately, of the 9.28 million students in higher education, only 17% are studying professional courses. As per data available, the number of Indians graduating every year is 3.6 million. However, the industry considers only 0.9 million of the graduates as employable. Most of the passouts are unemployable. As peer the recent McKinsey- Nasscom report, only around 25% of technical graduates, and 10-15% of general graduates are suitable for employment in the ITeS industry. And what are the factors that make them so.
Unfortunately, language used in our industries is English. Language skills of the graduate are far below the required standard. Even a graduate has very poor knowledge of English. They can hardly write correctly even simple communication. See an example. “Please grant me leave as I have a heart (sic) in my stomach”. You might have seen the worse example even.
Beside fluency in English, graduates lack analytical and problem solving skills. Our education system at the best provides bookish knowledge. At actual work, the person must have certain knowledge, but more so, he must have the skills to work under competitive environment. All the students from high school levels onwards must acquire certain soft skills such as team working, brainstorming, benchmarking, problemsolving, continuous improvement, and innovative thinking. But before students learn that their teachers must have the practical exposure to these soft skills that can be universally applied. It is not difficult, but it means the restructuring of curricula and change of mindsets who are the decision makers of the country’s education system.
IT/ITeS sector will need a workforce of 2.3 million to maintain its current market share by 2010. However, there will be a potential shortfall of nearly 0.5 million qualified employees and 70% of this will be in the BPO industry alone.
Language sensitive KPO/BPO is moving on fast track and that it must, as India has established a lead in it. There will be openings for 160,000 foreign-language professionals by 2010, but only 40,000 Indians will be available to fill these vacancies.
According to McKinsey’s estimates, India will require 73 million factory workers by 2015, 50% more than today.
While the workforce pool appears to be impressive, only 20% of the total pool is good enough and employable by India Inc. India Science Report says 63% of the science graduates are unemployed. But for the top few educational institutions, the quality drops sharply.
The 2,400 engineering colleges in India produce 4.5 lakh graduates annually. But the world-class talent is limited to only about 20,000 to 40,000 graduates. There is huge competition among the reputed corporates to grab the most of them. In every area of education, we require tremendous thrust to improve quality.
Hot sectors
India will have a shortage of 500,000 knowledge workers by 2010. India require capable and dedicated scientists, R&D workers, teachers, financial analysts, chemists, biotechnologists, and many other masters and Ph.Ds in other subjects.
Retail sector in 2006 will create 500, 000 total jobs- direct and indirect. The sector will require smart salesmen and experts in world-class supply chain management.
Airlines are adding about 500 new planes by 2010. Are we having the facilities to train that many pilots, maintenance engineers, and others to man related services?
Telecom is growing at around 70% every year and is expected to do so for some more years. After all our rural teledensity is still 2%. Will we be having telecom engineers?
Banking, insurance, and other financial service are growing at breakneck speeds. Even in outsourcing, the financial services are hotly in demand. How can it be manned by poorly taught and trained commerce courses?
Indian manufacturing sector is on comeback and will require a large number of first class engineers with a little different thrust on their skill in engineering product designs and development. We can take a lead in manufacturing with only contemporary competitive designs.
Is it so difficult to prepare our students or younger generation to meet the requirement of skills? Some important steps will be:
1.Restructure curricula with employability bias
2.Encourage Industry to participate or own the training institutes
3.Train teachers for the required technology, skill, and changed attitude
4.Create conditions in teaching profession that attracts capable people
Our finance minister in his budget speech promised to upgrade all the ITIs. I don’t know how many have undergone upgradation. It must be understood clearly that the country and the world do have even critical shortages of the world-class carpenters, plumbers, fabricators, masons, electricians, diemakers, nurses, and technicians and these ITIs could help us in that.
- Indra
Category: Employment/Education |
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