Synopsis–Despite running a skilling mission for years, India has very little to cheer about when it comes to availability of skilled labour.
For a labour surplus economy, India faces acute shortage of skilled workers. The recent Human Development Report 2020 highlighted that one out of five workers in India is skilled. According to the report, skilled labour as a percentage of the labour force in India stands at 21.2%, and other countries which share a similar position include the likes of Sudan, Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Liberia.
Amidst the pandemic’s adverse blow to the country’s labour market causing reverse migration and loss of 122 million jobs, as per Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), the entire skilled labour segment seems to have disappeared and bypassed the workforce.
According to Suchita Dutta, Executive Director, Indian Staffing Federation, even before the pandemic, the necessity of upskilling was not a part of livelihood or given a high priority. “The low-income workers wouldn’t go out of the way, take time off to learn or go upskill themselves while they are still employed somewhere. It was not something that was very popular. People see it as a loss of time and money as they don’t get paid for the time they take off. People who are doing both working and learning skills will also have too much to manage in their personal time and lives,” she told ET Digital.
She added that even if the workers invest themselves in training, there is no guarantee that they will end up with a job. Initially, the aim was to get people skilled and trained but not exactly mapping them to employment. She explained that only after the initial assessment showed that getting trained was not the necessity of the system, but getting paid was.
Adding to this thought, Chocko Valliappa, Vice Chairman, Sona Group of Institutions, told ET Digital that the government has been putting money on building skilling centres at one place (small towns and villages) but the jobs are demanded in another place (Tier-1, 2 cities).
“Every year it is doing the same, and it is only accelerating the migration crisis. We need to put money on jobs more than skilling, give the industry money for every job you create. You train 500 people for 3-6 months and after that they have to wait in line for a job which may or may not come. It could be a nine-month wait or no work sometimes. You have allocated funds and partnered with skilling partners and your job is done, but the guarantee for jobs for these skilled labour is not there. Skill segment shouldn’t depend on the government, but on industry. For example, the government should pay the auto industry for every skilled labour it hires,” he said.
A man weaves a carpet in Srinagar, Kashmir. Traditional Kashmiri handmade carpets are highly valued since ancient times.Speaking on similar lines, Amit Vatsyayan, Partner, Government and Public Sector, EY India told ET Digital that industry participation at all the stages of the process needs to be enhanced.
“Besides being an employer, industry should take part more in course design, capacity building, setting up Centre of Excellences and providing exposure to youth through industrial visits, expert talks, etc. Also, the job seekers and existing workforce need to continuously upgrade their skills given the changing job market with faster adoption of technology,” Vatsyayan says.
New definitions
However, the narrative around skilling has changed with the rise of gig economy. The ecosystem of flexible, freelance and task-based jobs has put the skilled labour in the informal sector at the centre. Gayathri Vasudevan, Chairperson of social enterprise LabourNet, believes that the gig workers’ ecosystem has shed light on the idea of how skills equals, income equals, productivity. “I think the gig economy will be the focus in the next coming decades as here the market itself is pushing us to recognize the workers in the unorganized sector,” she told ET Digital.
She added that even before the gig workers’ ecosystem came about, there was a requirement of consistent skilling and the majority of the workforce changed sectors every decade. Today, it is all about multi-skills where someone who is washing a car in the morning might do the job of disinfection in the day and sales in the evening. Further, she believes that the times of PSUs are gone and nobody wants to have any more full-time employees.
“So we need to understand where the market is moving towards and today in the market led by gig workers and wage has been put to a task. Therefore, the budget needs to think of its fiscal measures, sponsorship alone will not give results and we need a tremendous amount of fiscal stimulus to happen. For example, the skilling companies and gig workers’ platforms need to move to a lower GST slab. This way we will nurture the platforms, which in turn will boost creation of jobs in the skill segment,” she said.
Apart from this, she believes that the budget needs to ensure there is a whole facilitating ecosystem of skill training which is not just based in cities or focused on selected sectors.
The gig economy has led to the creation of a new type of work.New skills
Among the many changes brought about by COVID-19, rapid tech adoption was one of the major ones which disrupted businesses all around the world. The pandemic has changed the whole paradigm and the programs have been redesigned to adopt to the current phase of the IT Sector.
“Most of the companies have expedited their automation process, even for the simplest of things. A lot of changes are about to come. Formal skill training will become an important part of all organisations. Skills related to automation and AI-related jobs, digital management, anything to do with contactless, will be given a priority,” Dutta said.
She added that we will need sensitivity around skills that were becoming very popular and possibly driving jobs in the coming months. We need to ensure that the people need to be skilled in jobs that are digitally alternate to their current ones. She cited an example of a former mechanic who will now be required to understand how to deal with an automated system, which can help him do the job better. “We will need more technical skills compared to what we currently have,” she said.
For people to acquire these technical skills, the country requires the right infrastructure. Even before the need for technical skills arose, there was a huge problem of the poorly trained workers from the informal sector. These were the self-taught workers who would observe and learn rather than taking time off from their current job to learn a skill from skilling centres.
“The government needs to work on providing bandwidth and connectivity across the country. It needs to be in the remotest parts of the country to enable skill training through digital platforms. They need access to hardware for the same, so they can learn different skills. Many organizations are creating learning content through videos online and the government should ensure that this reaches the last-mile users,” said Neeti Sharma, Senior Vice President, Teamlease Services.
Practical classes for two-wheeler mechanic training at LabourNet Services India.She also advocates linking diplomas and degrees to what people are learning remotely. Since the National Education Policy has recognised online degrees, she believes the government needs to create a database of universities offering online degrees and diplomas which will help tremendously in uplifting the informal sector. She envisions a future where 30-40% skilling will be face-to-face and nearly 60% will be through virtual learning and very little will remain for on-the-job.
Need for social security
Another factor which had been plaguing not just the skilled labour segment of the workforce but the entire labour market is the lack of social security. Losing lives during the lockdown phases and reverse migration shed light to the plight of labourers and the deplorable work conditions they live in.
“Today you have social security only if you are in the formal sector. The Employment Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) covers only 10-15% of the working population, which is really low. Therefore, social security needs to be more universalized and not sector-focused or state-sponsored. If it is state-sponsored, then there will be issues of lack of productivity, lack of reach, administrative cost of delivery, etc.,. You need to nurture platforms for this and they can be charged for social security. Don’t allocate funds from the budget to a board and then take away the accountability. The moment you aggregate platforms, skill gets standardized and social security becomes a norm,” Vasudevan said, adding that the government needs to stop looking at skilling as a sponsorship.
In the meantime, the new labour laws introduced appear to have covered social security under their umbrella. They have also included the gig economy and platform workers such as cab drivers, delivery executives, freelance content writers. The scope of EPFO has also been broadened and includes all institutions employing 20 or more workers.
Share the joy of reading! Gift this story to your friends & peers with a personalized message. Gift Now
aniltikotekar4sme.com 