Because the youth sits at the foundation of a nation that dreams big!

“If you want to predict the future of a nation, just look at how its youth is doing.”

The diversity in India is unique. Being the largest democracy in world, it is the land of many languages where people profess all the major religions of the world. The vast population is composed of people having diverse creeds, customs and colours. It is also a country with largest youth population with a rich demographic dividend waiting to be exploited. We need to transform this resource into an asset rather than liability which is the case as of now.

The country presently faces a dual challenge of severe paucity of highly-trained, quality labor, as well as non-employability of large sections of the educated workforce that possess little or no job skills. We need to bridge this gap and make our youth equipped with proper skill and knowledge.

Our youth is smart, intelligent, and hardworking; the only problem is they are not skilled.

The past decade has brought about a transformation in how our economy functions and reacts to the outer world. More than ever we are welcoming and preparing a positive environment for the foreign players to come to India and set up their businesses here; just look at the way our Prime Minister Mr. Narender Modi has reached out to the world and is urging the business leaders to make India their manufacturing hub.


The great divide between skills demand and supply

Because of the economic sustainability and a stable government at the center, global businesses are increasingly looking at India as an important market; many have set up their facilities here and many others are in the process. But as a country, we are just not prepared to meet their needs for talent. And this would eventually have an adverse impact on our dreams to become the leading economic power in the global arena.

Take any sector - retail, automobile, agriculture, beauty & wellness, BFSI, or capital goods – and you’d invariably come across one common problem they all are facing: the problem is a lack of sufficient supply of skilled manpower, of the youth skilled enough to take up job roles across the established and emerging industries.

NSDC – a strategically built skill development and management system

National Skill Development Corporation or NSDC is a public-private partnership, co-promoted by the Ministry of Finance. Since its inception, it has been engaged in the promotion of skill development throughout the country. It has recognized the sectors which need immediate attention, including healthcare, retail, and media & entertainment. And accordingly, it has set up arrangements with top skill development companies to reach out to the youth in the rural and semi-urban areas and up-skill them for different job roles across industries.

NSDC, in itself, is a complete skill development and management system that oversees the promotion and progress of skill development in the country.

To better oversee the skill development work, NSDC has set up different sector skills councils like Agriculture Sector Skill Council of India, Capital Goods Skill Council, and Construction Skill Development Council of India which dedicatedly strategize, develop, and monitor skill development in their respective industries.

The future ahead

The one year old government at the center has launched many new initiatives to boost skill development across the country and encourage the youth to look at skill development from a whole new perspective. So from here, the future looks to hold abundance of opportunities for the youth who was trapped in the unemployment spiral for long, and for the country that has begun to dream big.

For more incisive insights on the state of skill development in India, please read our other published articles. Our future posts will cover more on India’s evolved skill development and management system and the efforts being carried by each and every sector skill council.