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India’s young population is a demographic asset, strengthened by the country’s developing national education policy and skilling environment, said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology.
He further said that the National Education Policy seeks to equip every Indian, even those who drop out of school, with the requisite abilities to thrive in the job market.
“We want to convert this demographic dividend into not just a demographic dividend, but also create a talent pool to address our own ambitions and those of what the world sees in us. We are working very hard at it, and by 2025–26, the first signs of this work will bear fruit,” he said while speaking at ‘Breakfast with businessline’ event in Bengaluru.
Through the National Educational Policy and the Unified Skill India Digital platform, he noted that the objective is to develop a unique set of skills that fall into three categories: opportunities within and outside of the district’s borders; and opportunities beyond the nation of origin in order to meet the demands of the country’s young population.
Responding to a question asked by an edtech player focussed on skilling and the framework and policy support in higher education in the country, Chandrasekhar said: “I’m willing to accept that it is not perfectly there yet, but we have certainly come a long way from where we were in 2014.”
Skill India Digital Platform
In 2014, the total workforce was about 42 crore, of which, about 30–31 crore were unskilled, which would translate to three out of every four Indians in the workforce being unskilled. “Since then, we have skilled around 7–7.5 crore young Indians.”
The Skill India Digital Platform that has been launched allows digital skilling and is a kind of digital job exchange, too, where those who are skilled and those who require skill also exchange skills. Furthermore, by transforming colleges and schools into skill centres with a focus on types of skills that are only industry-ready and are future-ready.
“This is a partnership between industry, the employers, and the education system, which includes both the higher education system, the school education system, and the skilling network, delivering the skills that are served by those,” he added.
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