Reimagining Work, education, skills in India’s Digital Century

Introduction

India is currently going through economic, demographic, and technological transformations. Employment of 600 million below the age of 25 is both an asset and a challenge for India. Fulfilling their aspirations will be the defining challenge of the next half-century, and a key driver of growth and progress.

Youth today is looking for education and employment opportunities that will enable them to meet their remuneration and job security expectations, and allow them to be upwardly mobile.

For this, it is important to ensure that India’s youth have a solid educational foundation and are prepared for a changing job landscape.

The Current Working Landscape in India

• Unemployment rate: According to the Periodic Labour force survey (PLFS) 2018, the unemployment rate among the urban 15-29-year-old was 23.7%.
• Lack of skills: It is estimated that the future of work will increasingly be volatile and uncertain. Currently, about 30-60% of the skills of the future do not exist within the workforce.
• Agriculture share: Nearly half of India’s workforce is engaged in agriculture, down from 61 percent in 1999-2000.
• Gender divide: Among women, 62.5 percent still work in the agricultural sector compared to 42.5 percent of men.
  • 92 percent of employment in India is informal, and unemployment in 2017 was estimated at 6.1 percent.
  • The labor force participation rate among males stands at 96 percent, compared to just 27 percent among females.
• Most preferred sector: Youth prefer working in the public sector. This, in combination with their openness toward the gig-economy, freelancing, and entrepreneurship, suggests that what is attractive about the public sector is security, salary, and stability.
• Rise in gig economy: The gig economy—short-term work relationships between workers and companies for a specific assignment and time—is growing fast in India, encouraged by a rise in the number of start-ups, co-working spaces, and crowd sourcing platforms.
• Changing nature of jobs: Exponential technological change resulting from artificial intelligence (AI) and automation coupled with the growing talent pool and the gig workforce—is likely to shrink the shelf life of skills. As a result nature of jobs is expected to change in the coming years.

What are the major trends in Work in India?

India is experiencing rapid technological change and digitization. Companies are increasingly adopting time-saving and quality-improving technologies. At the same time, individuals are becoming more digitally connected. Some trends in India’s labor market stand out:

1. Additional hiring of workers to deal with new technologies: A greater share (33 percent) of companies in India report needing to hire additional workers owing to the introduction of new technologies.
2. Gaps in required skills and financial constraints: Companies appear to be optimistic about technology and digitization and anticipate adopting new technologies and digital tools in the next five years. The greatest barriers experienced by companies are gaps in required skills and financial constraints.
3. Temporary hiring: Companies are increasingly hiring contract (temporary) and freelance (self-employed) workers. Companies report that the protections, benefits, and wages for these workers are significantly less than those for permanent employees.
4. Cut on female employees: Many companies employ fewer than 10 percent, female workers, 30 percent of companies report having no female employees at all.

How to transform the ‘job sector’ in India?

• Technology advancement: According to the World Economic Forum, more than 1 billion jobs, almost one-third of all jobs worldwide, is likely to be transformed by technology in the next decade.
• Shifting focus from degree to skills: Degrees remain the greatest employment qualification in India. Organizations tend to prioritize years of work experience and educational attainment when considering new employees.
  • However, if the focus is shifted from degrees to skills, it will enable a bigger workforce that represents the diversity of our populations, and will help close the all too familiar opportunity and employment gaps.
• Skill based education and employment infrastructure: This will mean transitioning to always-on skills-based education and employment infrastructure that embraces not just credentials and certification but fitness-for-job and employment as outcomes.
• Continuous learning: In recent years, several companies – like Google and IBM – have embraced this kind of thinking and have increased hiring from alternate talent pools. Several more are investing in continuous learning for the workforce.
• A strong connect with employees: Others, like Infosys, following COVID-19, have brought together a consortium of partners on a free, online platform, to provide job training and apprenticeship opportunities for job-seekers and to connect them with employers offering them new work streams and career pathways.

Skill development ecosystem in India

• Joblessness in the Indian market is often considered a result of poor training of youth as only 7% of people surveyed under PLFS declared any formal or informal training.
• But the existing paradox is that 48 % of employers reported difficulties in filling job vacancies due to talent shortage.
• In the IT sector which is considered a strong point of the Indian economy, there were around 1,40,000 skilled techies who could not be employed in 2018 despite employers' efforts.
• As per, Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), the more educated Indians are, the more likely they are to remain unemployed too.
• PLFS 2018 revealed that 33% of the formally trained 15-29-year-olds were jobless in India.
• Youth declaring themselves as “Not in the labor force, education, or training” rose to 100 million in 2017-18 from 83 million in 2011-12.
• These are young people who are disheartened by the current state of affairs and are neither looking for jobs nor are they interested in studying or training themselves.

What Government initiatives are tackling the ‘skill shortage’?

• Target for skill development: Skill India program is aimed at creating 300 million skilled people by 2022.
• Creation of Ministry of Skill development and entrepreneurship: In 2014 India created the Ministry of Skill development and entrepreneurship to harmonize training processes, assessments, certifications, and outcomes.
• Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana: Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana has short-term training as its main tool which could last between 150-300 hours and which also included some placement assistance by Training partners.
• Skill India: Skill India or the National Skills Development Mission of India is a campaign launched in 2015.
  • It is managed by the National Skills Development Corporation of India (NSDC).
  • The vision is to create an empowered workforce by 2022 with the help of various schemes and training courses.
• Pradhan Mantri Rojgar Protsahan Yojana: The Scheme aims to promote employment generation.
  • It is implemented through the
  • It seeks to benefit employers by creating a larger pool of employable candidates and to benefit workers by finding jobs at these companies, supplemented by access to social security benefits from the organized sector.
• Other major schemes are-
  • Employability Enhancement Training Programme (EETP)
  • National Employability Enhancement Mission (NEEM)
  • AICTE-Startup Policy
  • Skill Assessment Matrix for Vocational Advancement of Youth (SAMVAY)
  • Skills Acquisition and Knowledge Awareness for Livelihood (SANKALP)
  • Skills Strengthening for Industrial Value Enhancement (STRIVE)
  • Leadership Development Programs, etc.

Why ‘only skilling’ is not enough?

• Skills development in India primarily focuses on short-term, job-related skills training to gain quick access to employment.
• Little focus on long-term capabilities: There is little focus on developing long-term capabilities and enhancing individual growth.
• Doubt on upward mobility: While the skilling mission in India seeks to increase productivity and access to employment, there is little evidence to suggest that this supports long-term increases in income or upward mobility.
  • For example: The government expected that Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana trainees would create their enterprise. However, 24% of the 6,15,000 started their businesses.
  • Till 2018 out of 3oo million under the PMKVY,  the program could reach 25 million.

Addressing the skill gap

• General skills: Five general skills that companies expect to become more important in the next five years include trustworthiness, teamwork, communication, personnel management, and analytical thinking.
• Technical skills: The technical skills that companies anticipate becoming more important for them in the next five years include technology design, accounting and auditing, IT, digital privacy and security, and business analysis and strategy.
• Skilling, upskilling and reskilling: Skilling, upskilling and reskilling  to tackle the future, is what India’s demographic dividend requires to stop it from becoming a  challenge in itself.
• Training for relevant outcome: There is a need to provide skills training that provide relevant information on vacancies, advice on applying for jobs and job placements, and career guidance and counseling.
• Investment on re-skilling: Companies must invest in their employees’ up-skilling and re-skilling, or be willing to pay a premium for highly skilled workers.
• Beyond certification: Personal interest and keenness were the youth’s primary reasons for pursuing their fields of study. They value higher education but want targeted, certified skills training to supplement their classroom learning.
• Social security and protection: The tension between legacy sectors and the opportunities of the digital economy can be managed by carefully crafting policies and programs that provide social security and protections to freelance workers that are typically available only to those in full-time, permanent jobs.

Assessing Learning Imperative in India

• India has made significant progress towards improving education in recent years.
• Universal primary education: Primary school enrolment is now nearly universal, and between 2003 and 2013 the teacher-pupil ratio has declined by 20 percent.
• Improved basic facilities: Basic facilities such as toilets and electricity have also significantly improved.
• Jump in online learning: In the post, COVID scenario Technology adoption in education has scaled beyond expectations. The current situation has served as a catalyst, causing a huge jump in online learning.

How to cope up with the continuous technology transformation?

• The world is in the middle of a technological transformation dominated by artificial intelligence (AI), automation, the move to industry 4.0, and cybersecurity challenges.
• Many traditional institutes are struggling to provide effective vocational training for students to gear up for this world.
• Thus educational institutions must transform the learning journey for students - from class content and delivery to providing access to advanced technologies via hands-on labs, mentorship from top technology minds.
• Close collaboration with corporates to keep the curriculum current, and ensure robust placement programs.

Solutions for the education sector

• Revamping the education sector: India’s growing population adds to the challenge. But to capitalize on it, the education system needs to ramp up to meet the demands of the future workforce for multiskilled professionals and those who can use smart machines, data, and algorithms to get results.
• Digital Divide: Technology has the potential to achieve universal quality education and improve learning outcomes. But in order to unleash its potential, the digital divide (and its embedded gender divide) must be addressed. The required infrastructure and connectivity must reach the remotest and poorest communities.
• Relating education to real life: Curricula must be grounded in students’ realities, cultivating critical, creative, and flexible thinking, resilience, and empathy in students.
• Symbiotic relationship with environment: Developing a symbiotic relationship with our environment has taken on a new urgency, and teachers must help students think about their relationship with their surroundings.
• Enabling learning: Teachers must reinvent their roles from that of transferring information to enabling learning.
• Diversity of resources and customized learning: The shift to distance learning has afforded many opportunities to teach differently, encouraging self-learning, providing opportunities to learn from diverse resources, and allowing customized learning for diverse needs through high-tech and low-tech sources.
• Quality check: There must be quality assurance mechanisms and quality benchmarks for online learning.
• More focus on outcome: Despite the improvement in inputs, more progress is needed in student learning outcomes.
• Ensuring student’s development: For educational institutions, ensuring students get the most from their enrolment is the key. Thus guaranteeing maximum employability is important.
• Access to technology: By providing students with access to the latest technologies, modern devices, and enough opportunities to do hands-on projects that simulate the professional world, they are likely to be much more employable than the average student with just theoretical knowledge sans practical applicability.
• Strong digital core: Raising institutional standing is an important tool to run a robust research program, build quality and reputation, and create distinct market differentiation. These two goals can only be achieved with a strong digital core that drives great efficiency and dynamism.

Conclusion

 Despite barriers to technological adoption, Indian firms are making strides in incorporating new technologies. They recognize the potential of Big Data, machine learning and AI, and the Internet of Things (IoT), and choose to incorporate these into their existing business models and operations.

Today despite discrepancies in aspirations and misaligned expectations, the workforce and India’s firms share a common drive to be more receptive and resilient, which will be the hallmark of the labor force in India’s digital future