The sweep of automation, self-service and the inability to create new jobs at a lively pace are threatening to put a spanner in the works and the biggest challenges facing youth today are “Where are the jobs and what are the skills we need to find them?”
Five days in the State of West Bengal, traveling through Bagdogra, Siliguri, Kalimpong and Kolkata underlined the potential we have in our country and the challenges! Everywhere we went and chatted with young people, from the well-heeled to the underserved segments of society, the aspirations of young India came through loud and clear.
Having heard of India’s demographic dividend in many fora and the great opportunities that will be opened up in new vocations in India and globally, the millennials and Gen Zs of our country are ready and willing to be challenged and take on leadership roles in this new world. Alas, the sweep of automation, self-service and the inability to create new jobs at a lively pace are threatening to put a spanner in the works and the biggest challenges youth facing today are “Where are the jobs and what are the skills we need to find them?”
In an environment that is somewhat gloomy, two beacons of excellence that we have researched in the Skills sub-group of the CII National IT Committee point the way to possible scalable models for the future. First is the Bihar Kushal Yuva program, which has since 2016 been rolled out across over 1600 centers, enrolling nearly a million youth who have completed education up to tenth grade and above. Nearly 4,00,000 youth have graduated, with fifty per cent being women. The success of the program can be attributed both to its extensive coverage of the state and the involvement of multiple local skill development partners and also to a custom-built technology backbone that facilitates on-line learning, assessment and certificate delivery to learners. Built on Microsoft Azure Cloud platform, the service also maps to LinkedIn job recommendations of appropriate jobs to learners and enables extensive analytics for learners as well as program administrators to predict and prescribe learning and employment outcomes.
In Pune, the Skills Lighthouses program, which is a Public Private Partnership of the Municipal Corporation with a corporate, supported non-profit organization Pune City Connect, is a true exemplar in the area of equity and inclusion. Deploying Google Maps to track every citizen across the fifteen municipal wards of the city, the lighthouses are generating amazing results through the realization that just running a skills ceneteris not enough. Their well-researched and fine-tuned process sees slum youth brought in through community outreach and enrolment, motivated with a forty hour foundation course that provides a safe space, builds self-image, resilience and market understanding, supports every dream and counsels them to choose vocations that align with their aptitude, delivers hundred to three hours of skills through well-chosen and curated providers and finally engages with the students through placement or entrepreneurship and alumni interactions and mentoring.
In more localised job and entrepreneurship areas, a massive outreach is needed to get the best of learning content being used by corporate leaders.
One common factor in both these cases is the deployment of technology to provide an underpinning for the learner journeys and ceneteradministration. Pune City Connect is partnering with two digital software builders to create a “first of its kind” AI enabled platform that will be cloud hosted like the Microsoft service in Bihar. And most important, all avenues are being explored to bring the best of technologies – Mixed Reality, Machine Learning, Personalized programs and program enablement through every phase of the student journey.
What can the local, state and central Governments do to support programes like these and build scalable models that can tackle India’s challenge of preparing a million candidates every month for sustainable livelihoods? The Ministries of Information Technology and Skills would do well to support PPP Centres of Excellence that can demonstrate these models and enable financial support for scaling through development funds and channelizing funds available in various coffers of the Government. A transparent collaborative model would also invite participation of impact funds, CSR monies and even global philanthropic foundations and solve one of the biggest riddles that faces the country today.
Another major bottleneck for learning is the availability of content. NASSCOM through its Future Skills program has enabled IT industry employees to get on to a reskilling and upskilling path and partnered with leading global content providers. This is straight forward in the global world of technology but in more localized job and entrepreneurship areas, a massive outreach is needed to get the best of learning content being used by corporate leaders to train their own job entrants and make it available through learning platforms for consumption by all validated job seekers. This is another area where public and private sector need to partner with civil society.
My final meetings in Kolkata at Social Venture Partners gave me scope for optimism. A young Snigdha Shah, SVP GM in the city is leading the search for outstanding skills providers and multiple entities we have met, not just in Kolkata but all over Eastern India are showing great promise of transformation.
by Ganesh Natarajan
