BackBudget Wishlist | Push progressive education and training policies
Budget Wishlist | Push progressive education and training policies
PremiumKarthik KS, CEO, 24x7 learning
New Delhi: India is in urgent need of adopting proactive and progressive policies on education and training. As per industry surveys, India is likely to face a 3.1 million talent shortage by 2010 and 1 million leadership talent shortage by the year 2015.
Now is the time for the government to address India’s growing skills shortage by allocating money for education and training, setting up skill development missions and partnering with corporate India to train, re-skill and up-skill the great Indian workforce.
The government has taken a positive step in this regard with increase in education allocation in the 2007-08 Budget.
Key Recommendations
* Initiatives like Skill Development Mission to extend training facilities to 10 million people a month, up from 2.5 million a year; this is an excellent move towards enriching India’s talent pool
* Increase spend on education and simultaneously join hands with private enterprises to train emerging workforce in order to meet challenges that lie ahead
* Incentivize corporates for training fresh graduates, or to bear part of the training costs incurred by organizations; get private sector to be more involved in education and training scenario
* Take government’s help to involve corporates in graduate level education, thereby improving young India’s employability prospects
* Step up private public partnerships that can take India to new heights with a rich talent pool geared to meet all challenges of a rapidly developing economy
* Set aside funds from the education budget to enhance employability of educated youth; use this amount to reimburse industry for having trained fresh manpower before recruitment
* Encourage industry to be creative in its search for talent and reach out to millions of so called ‘unemployable’ or ‘near hires’ youth; get industry to train and recruit as then they in their own interest do a good job of training these candidates
* A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation brings interesting statistics: 0.1 % increase in Education Budget set aside for reimbursement to industry which means industry can train 3.2 million potential ‘near hires’ at Rs10,000 per individual
It will not be unreasonable to ask at this point, if an end to this talent shortage in India Inc seems to be in sight?
Karthik KS is the CEO of 24x7 learning, an e-Learning implementation company that focuses on the education and training sector
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