Skills Development: Challenges and Opportunities Ahead

As the world is ageing India is growing younger by the day as half of the population is below the age of 35. This sound as the good promising news but the current reality is ‘unemployability’ which is a bigger threat than unemployment. According to a survey, by 2020 the number of college graduate is expected to rise between 75 lakh and one crore annually; in the same period about one crore new job will be created. Although it looks like a perfect demand-supply balance, 80 percent of the manpower resources will be unemployable, which is quite an irony.

India faces number of challenges on multiple fronts one of the greatest challenges is of empowering the young population with 21^st century skills. A drastic change in the style of performing a job in almost all the business organization has been demanding the highly skilled and specialized work force. Education has the responsibility to equip the youth with real knowledge and skill by which they will be able to build up their attitude and vision for the future. The focus of education should not only be on preparing student for employment but more important towards developing employability skill which are not just job specific but cut horizontally across all industries and vertically across all jobs from entry level to higher level. Employability skill is the attribute of employee other than technical competence that make them asset to the employer.

In the present deregulated and highly competitive global corporate environment, the existence and survival in the crowded market is a challenging job. Skill development is the essential ingredient to future economic growth in India as the country transformed into a diversified an internationally competitive economy. Vocational education can only have it full economic impact if it produce people with the skill that can get them well paid, fulfilling were as per industry requirement. The need for vocational education can no longer be ignore.