Friday 12 July 2013

INDIA IS PROGRESSING?

India is progressing with an amazing growth rate. The growth rate of India is the second highest in the world. The youth of India is contributing a lot to its growth. It is believed that key reason behind Indian progress is its youth workforce, highest in number in the world. However, there is a problem, due to low employability skill sets youth are unemployed.

India is a world leader in the service sector. Large numbers jobs are waiting for suitable candidates. Indian youth is mostly tied up in IT. India is a leader in software. Software industries in India are continually offering white collar jobs besides some blue collars.

India is also the world leader in BPO (Business process outsourcing) and KPO (Knowledge process outsourcing). Large numbers of call centers are contributing to the industries and trades of America, Australia, Japan, European Union, Canada, and many other developed countries.

IT industry has seen a remarkable boom in India. The expansion of service industries such as IT/ITES and financial services over the past decade created a major discontinuity in India’s pattern of economic development. A sudden and sharp rise in workforce demand in these industries sparked a scarcity of skilled manpower and pushed up wages of skilled manpower beyond the growth in their productivity This industry has employed a large number of educated youth with fetching salary. Management, banking, finance, retail, telecommunication, entertainment etc. are some other new sectors that helped India in her tremendous growth.

Although India will have the world’s largest pool of working-age people by 2030, if the current trend in professional participation continues, only 539 million out of 962 million people of working age would be working by 2030. In the absence of any significant reforms in school and higher education, the quality of India’s professional force would remain below par Despite much-educated youths, there is a shortage of skilled manpower. This is the dilemma. There are unemployed youths and the companies are facing a shortage of manpower.

A recent survey throws light on the problem, problems with the educated youth. They are mainly lacking three types of skills.
    1. Communication/soft skill.
    2. Analytical, logical and problem-solving skill.
    3. Respective Domain Knowledge.

While in interview approximately eighty percent candidates are screened out due to lack of communication/soft skills. Rest fifteen five percent are screened out for analytical skills and lack of knowledge in their respective domain. Hence 95% of educated youth are lacking in one of these three main skills required for job and employment. Only 5% the f educated force of India is employable. Employers are struggling hard to attract them with huge pay packages that are increasing their production cost significantly. The employees are losing their competitive edge in global markets. Global slowdown only adds to the crisis. Corporations are now facing a dual problem.

The problem lies in the education system. The Indian education system has an incompatibility with the requirements of the industries. If workforce and industrial policies are not reformed, people with different education and skill levels, or from different states, would have unequal economic prospects. Several Indian corporates, especially from IT/ITES, already provide focused training to improve their people’s skills
Most of the newly employed youths are compulsorily undergone employers own training program. This increases the cost of employers enormously. It’s also time wasting.

As an individual, you must choose your courses carefully. You must interact with the industries to know their requirements. You must choose college/institute very carefully. Ensure that they are covering above mentioned three aspects in their curriculum. It is in your best interest to ensure that your institute is interfacing with the requirements of industries before you admit it.
What should be done as a general measure to solve the problem?

India can create jobs on the scale required on a sustained basis only with changes in its policy frameworks for education and workforce management. There must be a collaboration between Government bodies looking after education, Universities, all India committee of technical education and the representatives of the industries. The institutes must educate youth as per industries' requirement.


Have these done, India will not face the problem of unemployability and the youth of India will not remain unemployed.

Anil Kumar

      
       

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