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Business News/ Companies / People/  Five questions with Ajit Gulabchand
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Five questions with Ajit Gulabchand

CMD of Hindustan Construction on India's youth, their skill set and the increasing preference for jobs in the services sector

Ajit Gulabchand, CMD of Hindustan Construction Co. Photo: Ramesh Pathania/MintPremium
Ajit Gulabchand, CMD of Hindustan Construction Co. Photo: Ramesh Pathania/Mint

How do you think India can meet the aspirations of its young people?

It’s a big question. First of all, they all want to be educated in some form or the other. So that they are capable of doing a job, pursuing their own self-employment, if they like, or start a business. So, I think that’s the aspiration of these people.

Three hundred million of them are going to come in to the job market in the next 20 years. This poses a huge challenge to the Indian government as to how they will create those jobs. When you look at the United States of America, the largest economy, it employs 135 million people. Here we are talking of creating 300 million new jobs, which is creating two economies of the size of the US in the next 20 years. Therefore, are our laws such that people will invest in India to create those jobs? I think that’s the basic question.

Companies and recruiters speak of a skill gap that they encounter when they hire entry-level people. How can this gap be addressed?

I agree but when there is sufficient larger requirement, institutions get created to meet that need. There were no journalist schools at one point and (today) there are many and some of them are still shoddy but that’s how it will improve.

Specifically, what are the three things your company looks for in a young person you are considering for a position?

The first thing is his integrity. Does he look to do things purposefully and that will come down to whether he is qualified to do what he is assigned to do.

Most young people have, over the past decade-and-a-half, gravitated towards jobs in the services sector. Do you see that changing?

You must understand why services grew and not manufacturing. We have constraints when it comes to making investments in the country. If you require land, getting permissions is another set of problems. There are laws that do not allow many things to do at a large scale... Infrastructure is a problem. You have so many impediments put in by a socialist-controlled economy that we had, you obviously did not have enough of manufacturing. It is not because people did not want to set up manufacturing base here; of course, they wanted to do that but the fact is that the environment did not allow you to do so. Unfortunately, this continues to be disastrous. If manufacturing has to be set up in India, a new regime has to be created so that entrepreneurs wish to set up manufacturing units—small or big. Services came up because there were less impediments in that. The government was not even aware of IT (information technology) till it became a big business.

What is the one piece of advice you’d like to give young people?

India is such a large opportunity. If the government fixes the environment for investments, anybody can dream of becoming a billionaire and get there.

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Published: 06 Nov 2014, 01:26 AM IST
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