India stands at a critical juncture in its journey towards becoming a developed nation. With a young and dynamic workforce, vast natural resources, and a rapidly growing economy, India possesses immense potential. However, this potential can only be fully realized if the workforce is equipped with the right skills, knowledge, and training to meet the demands of a globalized economy. Vocational education and training (VET) is a crucial tool in achieving this goal, writes former IAS officer V.S.Pandey
In his famous book “Wealth of Nations”, Adam Smith, father of economics, wrote that the wealth of nations is not only their gold and silver and other possessions but the quality of manpower that the country possesses. He made this point in the eighteenth century but his theory resonates in modern times. It is clear from empirical evidence that we have gathered over a period of time that the more literate and more trained manpower countries have, the more they are economically developed. All the data gathered over centuries shows a direct correlation between economic prosperity of a nation and the percentage of trained manpower. Various reports published from time to time have concluded that a skilled workforce is crucial to a country’s economic transformation. It enables workers to move out of low-productivity activities and earn more in their jobs.
Indian planers have been aware of the importance of vocational education and training for a century or so. Beginning with Woods dispatch of 1854 – the communication from Sir Charles Wood to the then Governor-General of India Lord Dalhousie that underscored vocational and women’s education, all the education commissions and committees set up by Government of India have consistently recommended that vocational education and training systems must be made an integral part of our overall planning of education system and a large body of students have to be imparted vocational education and training after their school education. The national policy of education 1986 and Programme of Action 1992 and the National Educational Policy of 2020 also lays greater emphasises on vocational education. But all these policies, so far, did not bring about the desired results of skilling the manpower to the levels required . The NPE 1986 and POA of 1982 had proposed that nearly 20 percent of the student population should be diverted to vocational stream by the year 2000 but hardly 5 percent of students could be provided some form of vocational education along with the traditional school system of education.
Unfortunately most of our new workers joining the economic work force are not employable because they lack technical, social and behavioural skills. By 2028, if skill-building does not catch up with the rate of technological progress, India could forgo USD 1.97 trillion of GDP. The sad part is that only 4.7% per cent of India’s workforce has undergone formal skill training. In Germany and South Korea, the numbers are 75% and 96% respectively. Roughly, 431 million of the workforce are in the informal sector who largely remain untrained, leading to poor efficiency and out put. To top it all, 75% of our technical graduates and 90% of other graduates in India are considered unemployable.
India, the world’s most populous country, stands at a critical juncture in its journey towards becoming a developed nation. With a young and dynamic workforce, vast natural resources, and a rapidly growing economy, India possesses immense potential. However, this potential can only be fully realized if the workforce is equipped with the right skills, knowledge, and training to meet the demands of a globalized economy. Vocational education and training (VET) is a crucial tool in achieving this goal, offering practical skills and knowledge that bridge the gap between education and employment.
How critical is trained manpower’s role in economic development became clear in the early part of the new millennium when India surged ahead of other countries, including China, in the field of Information Technology. We quickly changed our technical education policy despite stiff resistance by status quoists and expanded our base of trained manpower in time to capture the emerging space in the IT sector economy. The initial spurt imparted during that time has helped us to maintain our pre-eminent position in the IT sector despite efforts by other countries to increase their share in the same.
Unfortunately, we are still to attain the goal of skilling our vast manpower despite policy framework being in place for almost two decades. Various studies have clearly brought out this fact that due to largely untrained manpower in our country, the efficiency in all aspects of our economic sphere is at a very low level. Studies conducted world wide have shown that training and skilling a workman increases his efficiency from 3 to 12 times, depending upon the level of training. Clearly, an increase in efficiency through training across the economic spectrum can lead to tremendous increase in output with consequential increase in the GDP. Not only that , poor workmanship of an untrained worker causes decline in the quality of output everywhere. Wherever we see a wire hanging loosely, inside or outside our dwellings, please remember it is the handiwork of an untrained electrician. A leaking tap or roof too is largely due to poor workmanship on account of lack of skill and training. Often, we find the tiled pavements in shabby and broken condition. This may partly be attributed to corruption leading to poor quality of material used, but unskilled workers laying the tiles is also a very major factor contributing to the state of affairs. If we look around, we will find manifestations of poor workmanship all over, without exception, leading to serious safety hazards. In any vocational training course, the first chapter of the training is invariably safety at the workplace. This approach is called safety first, and leads to a reduction in the number of accidents and loss of lives. But when there is no training of workmen regarding the safety aspect of their job, obviously they remain oblivious of the impending dangers.
There is no doubt that due to recent focus on “Skill India” campaign, there are more avenues available to our population to get the desired skills as per their choice to become a productive asset for the economy but a lot needs to be done to train our burgeoning young population. The National Classification of Qualifications of 2015, published by Labour Ministry of Government of India, details the job description of 3,600 civilian occupations covering 52 sectors. What we need is that training facilities be created for all these job descriptions with proper teaching and learning material. This is the need of hour to make the country an economic superpower and achieve the 10 trillion GDP target without any difficulty.
(Vijay Shankar Pandey is former Secretary Government of India)
