Towards Enhancing Employability of Young Indians

This paper analyses the needs, strategies, opportunities, and challenges of developing employability of young Indians (i.e. those in the age group of 14-35 years). Capacity building programmes are strategically essential for enhancing their marketable vocational skills and developing personality. They form about 65% of the total population. Scope of enhancing their employability through existing formal system of imparting technical, professional and management education at the graduate and post- graduate level is limited. Therefore, there is a need for creating more infrastructure and academic facilities to impart vocational skill training. The need for creating the cadre of employable young workforce is not only to meet the human resource requirement of the country, but also meet the increasing global demands for employing low-cost but rich Indian talents in the near future. There is a felt need for doubling the existing training capacity to increase the formally trained workforce by 150 percent. The paper discusses various strategic actions involving government and private institutions through Public-Private Partnership (PPP) to realise the mission of creating a human capital with 200 million graduates and 500 million skilled people in India by 2022. A SWOT analysis of Odisha, an economically poor state with low human development index, is made to understand the importance of enhancing employability for economic development. Strategic initiatives of National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and National Council on Vocational Training (NCVT) of India through PPP projects, various issues and challenges faced by the key stakeholders in the process of implementation of skill development programmes have been discussed in detail. A model defining road map for success of enhancing employability of young Indians is suggested with short-term and long-term measures. Creation of employment opportunities and employable workforce should go hand in hand. Otherwise, it can create more problems of unemployment. The skill development alone cannot ensure employability of a person unless other competencies such as communication, interpersonal relations and positive attitude towards work and people are developed as per the requirement of different employers. Therefore, vocationalisation of mainstream education needs to be emphasized rather than vocational education. To achieve this, there is need for a hybrid model with a new mindset, a new skillset and a new DNA of employable human capital.