Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday launched Nasscom’s Future Skills platform that seeks to initially upskill 40 lakh IT employees and prospective job seekers in eight emerging technologies that could drive IT jobs in the future.

These technologies include artificial intelligence, virtual reality, robotic process automation, internet of things, big data analytics, 3D printing, cloud computing, social and mobile. Nasscom has also identified 55 job roles that are going to be in high demand globally.

Addressing the Nasscom India Leadership Forum (NILF) and World Congress of Information Technology (WCIT) through a video link, Modi said the initiative will help the country maintain its competitive edge in the IT space.

Over 2,000 delegates from 30 countries are attending the three-day conference. While NILF is happening outside Mumbai for the first time, the WCIT, in its 40-year history, is being held in India for the first time.

Listing the Centre’s digital governance initiatives, Modi said linking 32 crore Jan Dhan bank accounts of the poor with Aadhaar and mobile with direct benefits of welfare measures had saved ₹57,000 crore.

While the online agriculture market e-NAM covered 66 lakh farmers in 470 agriculture markets, digital payments platform BHIM has registered transactions worth ₹15,000 crore, he added.

The Centre later signed an agreement with the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) to support the Future Skills platform.

Nasscom-MeitY pact

While extending support to the initiative, Union Minister for IT and Electronics (MietY) Ravi Shankar Prasad said it is not correct to say that technology will displace jobs. “For every 10 jobs it displaces, it can create 100 jobs,” he said.

Nasscom and MeitY will work together to enable “skill development and continuous learning not only for IT employees but also for those in the other sectors”, Nasscom President R Chandrashekhar said.

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