Industry must recognise the role of skilling India to ensure better work quality and better wages – this is Rajiv Pratap Rudy’s mantra. The Skill Development Minister told Bloomberg TV India that skilling India is the first step towards job creation and economic recovery.
Somehow there is a disconnect between the industry and the skilling aspect. The very idea of the creation of National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) was to create a body in a private space on government funding to meet industry requirements through the sector skill concept. Still the industry has not been able to connect to the sector skill councils. This is the weakness of my Ministry which existed in the form of a Department earlier. So the industry must realise it is not me who has to take a call – it is they themselves that have to take a call and find a mechanism where the industrial need of human resources are met. So they have to decide, they have create the QP, they have to look at the demand and they have to look at the entry level. This would require some resources from the industry itself, some partnership and the Ministry would just act as a facilitator.
The second challenge is to get SMEs – which account for 70 per cent of Indian industry – to pay better wages for skilled labour because once there is a demand there will be supply.
In this country, an average worker who works at the unskilled level gets about ₹5,000 per month. There are people who get about ₹1,000, ₹1,500 or ₹2,000 a month. If this small amount of training can get them to earn ₹10,000, ₹12,000 or ₹15,000, they will find a pathway for themselves. This is why industry is needed at the last edge to take these people out. They may not be the best, but it is [still] good for a person who is getting ₹2,000 in a village. That is what we are talking about – skilling at the basic level. If you are good, try to create a pathway for skills. A professor of plumbing or professor of welding in many countries like Singapore is a man who started as a welder or plumber. We have a completely different system; we look for engineers.
Somewhere, does the industry not need to step in to pay higher wages?
This is demand and supply. Higher wages will come from skills, from the demand of the industry.
One of the challenges is some kind of certification that will incentivise skilling for youngsters. How do you work on that?
We have to create the pathways. Someone who is +2 or ITI should be good enough to get an admission in a BA or BSc [course]. So we have to create that [pathway]. It does not stop for him there. Two years of ITI should be equivalent to 10 plus 2. This is what Gujarat government has done and it is running beautifully. I am sure the Centre and the HRD Ministry would be looking into that.