Need to certify India workforce as per world standards: NSDC

19 Oct, 2022

Ramadorai, Chairman of National Skills Development Council (NSDC) says that workforce in India needs to be certified as per world standards and that there is currently a mismatch in the demand and supply in the skills required improving hiring. Ramadorai was speaking to CNBC-TV18 as part of our ongoing series for the run-up to Budget on why NSDC’s efforts undertaken by the government have not shown fruit yet with just 40 percent placement record. Ramadorai says it is necessary to ensure that only certified people are hired. Infrastructure and construction, according to him are the most important sectors. Below is the transcript of S Ramodarai’s interview with Kritika Saxena on CNBC-TV18.

Q: My first question to you is skill development is a crucial part of all the various areas, for instance Make in India, Digital India, so specifically, what does the Budget need to address to ensure that India has the right skill and the right skill capability?
A: This is definitely a skill problem that needs to fit into Make in India, Digital India, Startup India, etc. Without skills, we cannot deliver anything on time and with quality and the kind of costs that are involved. So, when you talk about the supply and the demand mismatch, that is where the problem starts. How are we going to help the supply side for a number of vocational training providers including the government, etc to scale up with the right kind of incentives, for example, sales tax exemption. Second one, very clearly, from a demand side, is that if the corporates or any of the enterprises have to hire people with the skills, let us ensure that the people hire only the certified people and if they have to incentivise from the point of view of allocation of Corporate social responsibility (CSR) budgets, or incentivising in terms of tax concession based on the scale they have achieved, they can achieve a number of things in terms of demand versus supply mismatch being organised.

Q: To make Make in India a success, to make Digital India a success, what would be from your perspective, what would be the key sectors that you would look upon?
A: Infrastructure and construction is going to be the most critical one followed by the Digital IT services, platform based IT development, programming, programmers, database analyst, etc.

Q: From a state level, what do these individual states need to do to be able to ramp up their skill development because you cannot set up an aerospace park without having the capability to do so?
A: The first thing for a state is to form a state skill development mission which has the oversight directly from the CM of the state, and the Chief Secretary of the state or the person that is responsible as the decision making authority. Most importantly, the states skill workforce must be certified to world standards, if they have to relate to a global supply chain namely. Make in India is not in isolation, but part of the global supply chain. So, proactiveness of the states with a set of sales tax or tax implications and the ease of doing business is what I am talking about.

Q: From a skill infrastructure perspective what has been done in the last one year since last Budgetal date and what more can be done to be able to set up a detailed scale infrastructure in various cities before these 20 smart cities come up for instance?
A: Naturally a good question because in the past where the ITIs were managed through the public private partnership (PPP) adoption of ITIs the clarity was not there. The result one had to move all the ITIs from the MHRD to the Ministry of Skills and Development entrepreneurship. Having done that the PPP how they are going to function and what is the need of the hour in terms of the course content, curriculum, teachers training, certificational assessment all of these must be completely digitized. PPP must happen in an environment of trust and not government versus the private sector.

Q: Wearing the NSDC hat what is your five year dream for India from a skill perspective, growth perspective?
A: For me the target is the PPP must be really in full operational mode and everybody who is going through a training provider will get a 100 percent placement, with the right wages, scaled up quality and global quality and no other benchmark. That is what my vision five year since would be.