(GIST OF YOJANA) New-Age Skills – Generating Opportunities for Youth [JUNE-2018]


(GIST OF YOJANA) New-Age Skills – Generating Opportunities for Youth

[JUNE-2018]


New-Age Skills – Generating Opportunities for Youth

Swift technological advances in digitization and data analytics are reshaping human development, supercharging business performance, creating new wave of job opportunities and entrepreneurship for youth. Skilling youth in new tasks and jobs is an emerging strategy for realizing the full potential of our young workforce. With the nation’s average age of 29, skilling youth at scale with speed and standards is the key. Our country has significant disparity in demographic profile of our youth population. There is a higher median age in the range of 29-31 years in southern states. States like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar have a low median age of 20-22 years amounting to a rising working age population. Thus, the paradigms of skilling youth require different approaches for access and relevance.

Reaping Fruits of Demographic Dividend

With more youth joining the mainstream through education and skilling, it is projected that India will have a skilled labour surplus by 2030, mainly because of its vast supply of working age people and Government schemes and programmes to boost education and skill development. Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) have a significant role in meeting the/industry demand for skilled manpower. Ministry for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship has announced one ITI with industry-relevant skills in every block of the country by the end of 2018. Centre and State Governments are now working in tandem, leveraging their strengths for skilling youth so that even the last mile youth is able to capitalize on this opportunity. Schemes like Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Kendras (PMKK), Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) and National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (NAPS) can only be realized to the full potential while working in partnerships. Of late, Power and Skill Development Ministries have joined hands to launch a skill development programme to speed up the implementation of the Saubhagya Yojana, which is the government’s flagship universal household electrification programme.

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New Age Skilling in the Realm of Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 is characterized by increasing digitization, connected machines, amalgamation of emerging technologies, business analytics and cyber-physical systems. This is the concept of ‘Smart Factory’ where machines talk to each other through sensors. This leads to productivity enhancement and resource optimization. In this regime, low-skilled jobs will be eliminated, but an increase in capacity will create new jobs requiring higher levels of skills. With fast emerging Fourth Industrial Revolution in India, emerging skills in domains like, Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Robotics, Big Data Analytics and 3D Printing will be in much demand. The global trend towards knowledge-based economy will grow in coming times. Keeping pace with future skill needs of future job market, there is a need to understand the basic difference between a ‘task’ and a ‘job’. The future jobs will be ‘task based.’ These tasks will focus on acquiring new skills on critical thinking, design thinking, problem-solving, team work and cognitive learning. Re-skilling or up-skilling models of the existing workforce have to be designed to equip them with the changed task/job roles.

Integration of Industry 4.0 with Initiatives like ‘Make in India’, ‘Skill India’, ‘Startup India’, ‘Stand Up India’ and ‘Digital India’ are mechanisms that will create new opportunities. Make in India is aiming to transform our nation into a global manufacturing hub; this initiative has the capacity to create approximately 100 million new jobs by 2022. Union Budget also has given a boost to this by increasing import duties on mobile phones, automobiles, etc. This will attract foreign companies to start manufacturing units in India, thus enhancing employment opportunities for the Indian youth. The IT sector is going through a period of disruption that features protectionism, automation, and global challenges; all this is a great opportunity for our technology savvy Youth.

Startup India programme launched 1n January 2016 is generating large scale employment and is building a vibrant ecosystem for nurturing entrepreneurship and innovation. Eligible startups are exempted from income tax levy on share premium received as well as given 100 per cent deduction of the profits and gains from income for three out of seven consecutive assessment years. Government of India has come out with a new draft for telecom policy National Digital Communications Policy 2018 with the aim to create a roadmap for emerging technologies. It has also laid out plans to attract $100 billion investment and create four million jobs by 2022. The policy aims at increasing India’s contribution to global value chains by creation of innovation-led startups in the digital communications sector. The policy also features training one million for building new age skills, expand IOT ecosystem to five billion connected devices and accelerate shift to Industry 4.0.

Nurturing Innovation Climate

Strategic linkages between Academia-Industry-Government can boost innovations and R&D in institutions. Youth capital management requires providing education and employable skills. Industry has a significant role to play in this domain by providing such opportunities through their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) budgets. Youth in semi-urban and rural areas have extraordinary potential and entrepreneurial skills. If they are exposed to an ecosystem where their innovative thinking is nurtured, they can create frugal and scalable innovative models. A right exposure to seed funding, mentoring, network support and technology can unleash their potential. Many such models are already happening that have resulted in job creation and revenue generation.

The Road Ahead

As per World Bank, India is the fastest growing major economy in the world and it will continue to sustain up to another decade. In this expansion mode of economy, the opportunities are immense. In line with futuristic skill demands and industry 4.0, the skills agenda has to be revisited as global manufacturing will see structural shifts. Cross functional skills will be the critical factor of production and driver of competitiveness; continuous employee re-skilling or up-skilling is the need of hour. The government has to inculcate STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) in the course curricula, at least basics through the school systems with emphasis on creativity plus critical and systems thinking. There is an increasing pressure on our nation to be agile to respond to emergent and continuous change. Youth is the fountainhead for national growth and development. For this the strategy that leapfrogs has to be put in place that is not a linear, but progressive transformation. Government of India is trying to push the transformational change through various models and schemes and our youth is flexible enough to adapt to new opportunities.

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Courtesy: Yojana