Moin Qazi
India’s skill famine
In an age of skyrocketing unemployment, it is integral to incorporate marketable and real-world skills within the education system
Today, knowledge is ubiquitous, constantly changing, growing exponentially…Today, knowledge is free. It’s like air, it’s like water… There’s no competitive advantage today in knowing more than the person next to you…What the world cares about is what you can do with what you know S k i lli n g
– Tony Wagner, Creating Innovators
28
T
he amount of change the world economy has witnessed in the last two decades and the rate at which it has occurred is staggering. Everyone will inevitably have to deal with a significant degree of professional change. This shift
| APRIL 2021
could be seismic, to the extent that the very nature of a trade or profession is transformed forever. Skill development holds the key to India’s ability to tap the vast potential of its youth for achieving inclusive growth and for evolving as the hub of the global financial system. However, much thought needs to be invested in designing the right training methodologies. It should focus on learning by doing rather than rote classroom learning. India’s education system leans heavily on theoretical learning while practical training aspects involving “working with hands” and “learning by doing” take a backseat. Bookish knowledge is rarely supplemented with industrial training in the country. We have inadequate infrastructure for imparting industrial skills to the students who are dropouts of the educational system, particularly in rural India, or those who cannot continue their studies due to financial constraints. This is one of the main reasons for India’s demandsupply mismatch where the industry lacks a skilled talent pool and youngsters cannot find jobs. The mismatch between academic training skills and employment has widened, lead-
