Skilling the Youth of India – Burning Issues – Free PDF Download

The challenge of skilling India

• At over 19% unemployment rate, one in every five Indian who graduate (or even better) is unemployed.
• It is almost as if the economy penalises you for getting educated.
• PM Narendra Modi underscored the importance of a skilled workforce for achieving the goal of becoming Atmanirbhar Bharat.
• He said that in today’s world, only those individuals and countries would grow which are skilled.
• programmes run by  administration — such as the Skill India Mission and the ‘Going Online As Leaders’ (or Goal) etc – pertains to this goal of skilling.

•  India continues to be a country that faces one of the highest shortages of skilled workforce.
• The other side is the massive unemployment in India — one that worsens with educational attainment
• when the overall unemployment rate in the country was 6.83%. In comparison, those with graduation (or even higher degrees) face almost three-times the unemployment level. At over 19% unemployment rate, one in every five Indian who graduate (or even better) is unemployed.

1. The upshot of these two charts:
2. On the one hand, companies in India face an acute shortage of skilled manpower and, on the other, India has millions of educated unemployed.

What is skill? Though.

• there are three types of skills.
•  First, the cognitive skills, which are the basic skills of literacy and numeracy, applied knowledge and problem-solving aptitudes and higher cognitive skills such as experimentation, reasoning and creativity.
•  Then there are the technical and vocational skills, which refer to the physical and mental ability to perform specific tasks using tools and methods in any occupation.
•  Lastly, there are social and behavioural skills, which include working, communicating, and listening to others.
• Different levels of these three types of skills can be combined to further classify skills into foundational, employability, and entrepreneurial skills

• India had about 468 million people in its workforce. Around 92% of them were in the informal sector. Around 31% were illiterate, only 13% had a primary education, and only 6% were college graduates. Further, only about 2% of the workforce had formal vocational training, and only 9% had non-formal, vocational training.
• That report had also estimated that almost 1.25 million new workers (aged 15–29) were projected to join India’s workforce “every month” through 2022.
• If the skilling issue is not resolved, India risks forfeiting its so-called “demographic dividend”.

• But whether this will turn into a demographic dividend or not will depend entirely on how many of those in the working age bracket are working and becoming prosperous. If they are not in well-paying jobs, the economy would not have the resources to take care of itself since with each passing year, the proportion of dependents will continue to rise after 2040.
• “To put it simply, to attain its rightful place and realise its aspirations, India must become rich before it gets old

Latest Burning Issues | Free PDF

Sharing is caring!