The issue today is not skilling, but creating jobs. While the Make in India initiative could provide the answer, job seekers should realise that opportunity is around digital technology and artificial intelligence, said Rahul Keshav Patwardhan, Global Chief Executive Officer, NIIT Ltd.

Talking about the future of employment, Patwardhan said there is mass and growing unrest in society as people get more fearful, worried and demand action on job creation and social security from the government.

Job creation The government is investing huge amounts in imparting skills training, but the issue is job creation, he told a group of select reporters.

Highlighting the magnitude of India’s employment problem, he said, “India’s population is expected to touch 1.7 billion by 2050. Of these, 61.5 per cent are expected to be in the job market (between 15 and 59 years of age). Already an estimated 50 per cent are unemployed and another 667 million are to enter the job market in the next 25 years. The new entrants could face a similar or worse fate.”

“Our demographic potential, which was hitherto looked upon as an asset could be an albatross,” Patwardhan said, adding “and lay-offs are overhyped.”

Outdated curriculum Conceding that the IT sector is undergoing dramatic upheaval and asserting that it is only a small part as the services sector is going through a business model change, he said, “The pressure at present is on totally new skills and companies are desperately trying to re-skill their obsolete armies. It can be very difficult to find adequate supply of fresh talent with the required new skills as all of India’s universities are stuck in the time warp of old curriculum. There is a complete vacuum in supply of industry-ready talent pool.”

“The entire business model of the IT industry, which rested on the need for armies of people to do sweat labour at a high-cost arbitrage, is under existential threat as new business models emerge combining automation, crowd sourcing, platformation and massive shift – away from custom software and processes to cloud-based solutions,” he said.

The NIIT CEO is now doing a tour of the country, talking to the heads of various educational institutions offering strategic intervention to address the issue of placement.

He said: “We are in the process of creating a huge supply of freshers with required digital skills within a short period as the industry needs such hands and the university system is not geared to supply in the short term; we are also helping the industry reskill the existing professionals and creating a huge pool of high-end, full-stack product engineering IP creators.

“These can power the emerging start-up sector, create new jobs that old-fashioned manufacturing employment models like Make in India simply cannot. We have been working with companies, institutions and the public for the last 18 months.”

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