To fully realise the economic opportunities of the technological advancements, India will have to invest in Industry 4.0, also transform to a nimble demand led education system integrated with skill development. While planning policy, we need to understand India’s complexities and diversities with coexistence of Industry 2.0 and 3.0 along with Industry 4.0. We need to operate at all three levels simultaneously while bringing up the whole sector to Industry 4.0. Unless the skill program of the country is based on demography, geography, industry growth, migration of internal and international labour, India’s demographic dividend would certainly become a demographic nightmare. We cannot expect to get radically different results if we do not make fundamental radical changes in our approach for policy planning and processes.
Services sector is the powerhouse of job creation but services industry workforce is expected to shrink in the future due to automation
In the Industry 4.0 era, employees would be required to do less of manual work and more tasks of control, supervision of processes, process improvement and optimization activities. As per the ‘Future of Jobs’ survey conducted by the World Economic Forum, one-third of the desired core skill sets of most occupations in 2020 will be different from today’s requirements. Going forward the critical skills expected by the workforce can be classified into three baskets.
- High end skills like programming IT solutions, managing complex automated systems, systems thinking, critical thinking
- Business optimisation processes , cross industry communication, client focus
- Ability to work under uncertainty and constant change, team work, environment consciousness, multilingual capabilities
India’s preparedness for adoption of Industry 4.0 at present is low. It has been initiated in a few private automobile companies. There are no institutional arrangements to map this change that is engulfing the world at a very rapid pace. We are also faced with the challenge of finding jobs for 18 million youth entering the workforce annually for the next decade and a half. Inadequate job creation is further impacting the unemployment rates. Thus, there is an urgent need to bring five critical changes in the system to prepare for future jobs.
Create a seamless Labour Market Information System (LMIS)
The biggest problem before Skill India is the accuracy and reliability of data. Information on the demand for workers in specific occupations and the changing content of these occupations has to be developed using data from several sources. Currently, the baseline data on occupations is usually gathered along with other demographic and labour market data when a general census of the population is conducted once in 10 years.
Alternately EPFO, ESIC and other official statistics on government employees provide critical data on formal employment. This data can provide authentic information on the sectors/industries that are growing and also indicate the geographic location to help in planning for skill development.
For continuous data analytics on employment by industry, skills and geography, a Labour Market Monitor is needed that would map short term labour market trends by collecting, analyzing and disseminating data on vacancies and registered job seekers. Multilingual dictionary of occupations and skills is needed to enhance transparency of vacancy information to improve matching between job seekers and vacancies. This would also remove the differential taxonomy of classifying various job roles.
Expansion and integration of quality education and skill development
Vocational skills can only be built after acquiring basic competency – the kind that only school education can impart. For this, equal attention is to be paid to primary education. Currently, statistics tell a dismal story. Of all children enrolled in Class V, about half cannot read at the Class II level and more than 80% are unable to read sentences (ASER report, 2014). Close to half of all the children finishing eight years of schooling still do not have basic arithmetic skills. Of 100 students entering class 1, hardly 70 complete class 10, 50 complete class 12 and only 25 go to college. The drop out is colossal and a huge waste of human potential and capability.
T V Mohandas Pai Chairman, FICCI Skill Development Committee and Chairman, Manipal Global Education Services writes this piece for FICCI publication “Economy of Jobs”. Post continues on Page 3.
