Experts urge Centre to boost skilling programme in 2022

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Experts urge Centre to boost skilling programme in 2022

As skilling in the new and emerging technologies becomes the need of the hour for various industries, experts urge the Union Budget 2022 to put more money into a structured and comprehensive skilling programme.

Over 50 percent of India-based GCCs are investing in emerging technologies after the initial stages of the Global Capability Centre GCC setup were mostly focused on basic skills and cost arbitrage. This has resulted in an increase in demand for talent with special skills in artificial intelligence, analytics, cloud, robotic process automation, machine learning, and internet of things, etc. India s ability to attract GCCs in future will depend on availability of advanced skills in the digital space, so the government should look at supporting stakeholders to open more institutions and labs that offer training courses in these areas, and encourage current institutions to keep innovating their curriculum with active industry participation.

According to a survey by FICCI in 2021, 9 per cent of Indians will be in jobs that do not exist and 37 per cent of the workforce will need to change their skill sets to meet their employment demands. There is an urgent need for a boost to the skill development sector. The need to reskill and up-skill existing and potential workforce across levels and sectors, especially in the area of digitisation skills, has been emphasised by the pandemic. A higher outlay by the Centre on skill training for youth to make them job ready will help bridge the existing skill gaps in the job market.

It will be tougher to find talent in 2022 than in 2021. COVID has changed the world of work. The formal skill sets required by industries have undergone a shift. While for some it was sudden, the COVID has accentuated the growing skill gap and for many sectors it was in the offing. The Union budget needs to focus on reskilling India faster than ever before. The Union Budget should be focused on setting aside a clear program that helps groom our youth in new and emergent skills, which can help in increasing the per capita income of every Indian household. These programmes should start at the grass root level at the universities not only in metros but also from tier 2, 3, 4 cities and offer better paying jobs. This kind of a structured approach will allow rural India even more opportunities for women and will allow our youth to leverage the opportunities that will open up for them in the coming years.

A formalisation of the Indian economy is taking place and it is expected that we will have a more structured approach to the up-skilling, reskilling and industry-academia collaboration led by India Inc. People who can up-skill to be relevant will be scarce and at a premium. Every company and individual has to think about re-learning. A budget of Rs 3,000 crore set aside by the government is just too small to have a perceptible impact on skill development for every industry.