Industry wants campaigns such as Skill India to do more

Ahead of Budget 2017, some industry voices are calling for clearer outcomes from campaigns like Skill India and not just further investments.

However, the leadership across corporations have also been publicly conceding that jobs are being lost to automation. The World Economic Forum’s recent publications indicate that automation across the world will likely lead to more than 5 million (white collar) jobs lost by 2020.

This will have implications for the country’s ‘Make In India’ campaign for sure, but equally for Skill India.

There’s no guarantee that blue collar vacancies won’t shrink too.

The government’s Skill India measures are noteworthy. These range from the allocations for catalysing entrepreneurship among SC/ST communities and the digitisation of academic records to the scheme targeted at unemployed youth and a more recent announcement of an initiative to skill Indian youth who are looking to work outside the country. In the shorter term of about 3 years, the government targets making 400,000 people employable.

Independent efforts are equally helpful. Not only have prominent start-up names like Ola announced employment initiatives, but companies like Hunarr and Career Power that are in the training and exam preparation segments respectively are invested in ‘employability’.

Hunarr, an online marketplace that connects training seekers to training providers, sees demand for courses in software and network development, web design and animation as well as video editing, English language and personality development.

Co-founder and CEO Dinesh Geol explains, “Training institutes still function in a traditional manner. We want to equip them with a CRM solution that will help them understand what skills are in demand in their segment.”

Career Power, a test preparation platform, wants potential applicants from Tier 2 towns be in the know about job opportunities in the government sector, and in banking.

Anil Nagar, CEO and co-founder, Career Power says, “Our platform bankersadda.com was started with the purpose of information dissemination – often people don’t know what jobs are out there.”

Nagar knows automation will likely kill some banking jobs. He’s equally confident that as branches pop up in parts of the country that are not served well, talent will be needed in many PSU banks. Career Power is gunning for ₹50 crore revenue by the end of this fiscal. Time after time, economies and enterprises are caught by surprise in the wake of widescale disruptions. As India hopes to continue capitalising on its favourable demographics, automation trends call for astuteness and preparedness among government and Skill India stakeholders.

Hunarr’s Dinesh Geol says, “There’s a huge supply of candidates in the back office job roles, for example, but the demand is pretty low… the government should understand that companies will not employ back office people just because government is producing such workforce.”

Anindya Mallick – Partner, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP adds, “Key steps have been taken in the last few years… this has attracted private investment and provided momentum for the Skill India mission. However, the challenge lies not only in expansion of facilities, but also in raising the quality of skills.”