Scale up the skill ecosystem

Dinesh Sood, Co-Founder and MD of Orane International, and Training Partner with National Skill Development Council, Orane International, pens down his thoughts on skill development and the need to chart out clear pathways for the skilled youth to progress.

An all-time high of $250 billion services sector exports from India propelled optimism, in this current scenario the skilling initiatives are also in the spotlight yet again. Skill India Mission and skill development of the new generation is a national need, important to building a strong foundation of ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’. Under the aegis of ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas and Sabka Prayas,’ every youth is likely to be empowered with skill wings from school time to achieve a successful career.

Skilling India’s youth should undoubtedly be a high priority. But government initiatives to improve India’s skilling track record have not been very satisfactory yet. An analysis by the Sharda Prasad Committee on Skill India Reforms (2016) found that skill development courses often offered limited value to their employment opportunities.

While some skilling schemes have since been restructured, the problem has not been fully addressed. For instance, when the government introduced the Garib Kalyan Rozgar Yojana (GKRY) in 2020 to address skilling and unemployment issues that emerged in the wake of reverse migration, it did not pan out as anticipated. Many reports suggest that GKRY’s market demand-driven skilling initiatives were not successful; they did not reach the intended beneficiaries.

This hints at a systemic problem that affects the talent ecosystem in India.

Think about a girl belonging to a rural backward area, contemplating her next career move. How should she go about finding her calling? Where should she get trained? And what kind of jobs would be open to her? Stories of many youths in India today mirror that of rural girls. While they have a strong drive to better their lives, they are limited by a lack of access.

A major challenge that currently faces concerning its talent pool is one of ‘matching’ — between jobseekers and jobs, and between skill-seekers and skill-training providers. Search costs are prohibitive for employers and a candidate’s qualifications are difficult to verify. For jobseekers, there seem to be many available jobs but listings are spread across different platforms and there is no real way to establish the quality of job roles. For someone like a rural girl to successfully navigate through this maze would be almost impossible.

Similar issues plague the arena of skilling; candidates looking to upskill find it difficult to connect with credible skill providers, and ‘certified’ trainees often do not have the required skills to make them employable. Data from India’s biggest skilling programme, the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), testifies to this fact. Over the last few years, only one in four persons who trained under PMKVY were placed.

Designing the Future

Technology can potentially bridge these gaps that we observe in the workforce market. Already, several employers conduct recruitment through digital platforms, and there has been a significant ramping up of Statelevel employment initiatives such as the — Punjab government job portal.

To extend support to blue and grey collar workers, the Central Government has also announced a beta version of the Unnati platform. Meanwhile, several promising private sector initiatives have come up. While these initiatives are impressive, connecting them through a common digital platform can yield immense benefits.

The government has already indicated its plans to develop Unnati as a ‘platform of platforms’ to facilitate interoperability and bring together the entire ecosystem, in the form of a national open digital ecosystem — aTalent NODE.

Youth from rural backgrounds can benefit greatly from such a Talent NODE. In one place, they can find information on accredited skilling programmes including placement records, as well as details about employment opportunities. Private players can seek insights from this platform to create value-added services such as counselling, aptitude testing and credit transfers between training institutes. As more initiatives get integrated into this platform, it can host a wealth of information, offering a bird’s eye view of India’s talent.

Building a Robust Talent Node

While the Talent NODE is a promising idea, its execution will need innovative solutions to address several dogged challenges.

The first issue is the verification of existing skills — aproblem that has been especially hard to solve. Looking at international examples, Singapore uses ‘OpenCerts’, a blockchain platform to validate educational certificates.

While this could work for university/college degrees, verifying skillsets for grey collar jobs could prove tricky. This would require further standardisation and certification of vocational courses — atask which the Ministry of Skill Development has already started through the National Occupational Standards.

The second related issue is that of universal access. The informal sector accounts for approximately 93 per cent of the employed population in India. In the case of the Talent NODE, this population could face a high risk of exclusion.

Mitigating the exclusion risk would require engagement with marginalised groups, via both online and offline channels. Common Service Centres (CSCs), for example, could be used to facilitate last-mile reach. Similarly, userfriendly, vernacular interfaces could greatly benefit job and skill seekers across segments.

The Talent NODE is by no means a silver bullet. But if done right, through an innovative and inclusive approach, between 50-80 million people can be expected to benefit from new jobs or jobs that are better matched to their skills.

A million different opportunities firing up a million ‘ashas’ or aspirations, for millions like Asha — all through one interconnected ecosystem.

Today, education is not confined to what is taught in schools and colleges, but the scope of learning has become wider, owing to the evolving market and technological advancement. To secure a career in the competitive and evolving job market, upskilling and remaining industry-relevant are crucial for youths. Acquiring market-driven skills will offer great placement opportunities to the youths and help them to build promising careers. PBHJ