Skilling beyond the metros

As has often been said, India is blessed with a demographic dividend that can help the nation meet its ambitions. The country, with more than 1.3 bn citizens, has an average age of only 29 years, which means that a large percentage of India's population is young, thereby affording the country with a tremendous asset. However, there are a few caveats. 

One, the demographic dividend will not last forever. Across the country, people are ageing at different rates in different states. Thus, while India's overall demographic dividend may last a few decades, not all states will benefit from it at the same time. It is important to note that this pool of people who are at different conjectures of their lives have the avenues open for skilling. It is important for country to have skilled individuals v/s mere count and therefore its crucial to make knowledge and skills accessible to this young population through learning platforms.   

Secondly, from the experiences of other developed economies, harnessing the employability of this population will depend on multiple factors such as education, healthcare, availability of citizen services and governance. The country's policies must be in sync to ensure that we make the most of this demographic dividend. It is important for organisation to have upskilling and reskilling programmes which can empower individuals to keep them constantly up to date with the most relevant industry skills. 

To summarise, one of the key element which comes out is need for 'relevant skills'. There is much more youth can contribute towards of country who are skilled and employable v/s unskilled and unemployed. The answer to aptly utilize the growing demographic dividend of India is to invest in building the skill portfolio of the talent pool. 

Skills, and more skills 

The Economic Survey of 2021-22 shows that a lot of work is still needed to adequately upskill the youth for gainful employment. While urban regions have shown improvement in the numbers of educated and skilled workforce, rural areas need more support in terms of education and skilling. Skilling initiatives can support and augment formal education, especially in rural and tier-II India, to ensure that most of the country's youth find gainful employment. This will not only transform their lives but also ensure that India makes the most of its time-bound demographic dividend. 

Today, most districts of India have good broadband connectivity. At the end of 2021, there were 1,154.62 million subscribers in India out of which 521.28 million users, which is 45.15% of the total subscriber base were in rural India. The age of Digital has broken down boundaries and opened access to a massive digital knowledge center, which can create immense talent pool beyond the metros. If harnessed properly, this talent pool can transform the country by making the most of its youth capital. 

What needs to be done? Quite simply, youth in locations beyond the metros, should have access to the same skilling opportunities as in the metros. Technical training can make a difference to people's lives. Once suitably trained, these graduates will be able to make the most of what diverse industries such as information technology, healthtech, fintech, agritech, financial services, e-commerce, and others offer in terms of employment. 

Through digital means, learners from across the country and beyond the metros should be able to log in to training courses on diverse areas such as software engineering, data science, machine learning, digital marketing, cloud computing, cyber security, and other similar courses. In other words, there must be no difference between the availability of skilling opportunities to learners in metros and elsewhere. 

The practicality of these courses in a post-pandemic, digitised, and future-ready job market has been a critical factor in their significance. With Industry 4.0, there is a general trend toward courses that focus on automation, Internet of Things, and Artificial Intelligence, among other things, and a learner equipped with these in-demand skills has an advantage among recruiters. Apart from providing better job opportunities, they also provide numerous other benefits such as a competitive advantage, knowledge of real-life projects, and so on. NIIT also responded to the trend and launched assured outcome-driven learning programmes in all of these relevant domains, with a focus on developing deep skills and producing measurable results for learners.  Through its NIIT Digital platform, the company launched new age, online, instructor-led programs in fields such as Digital Marketing, Product Engineering, Software Engineering, Data Science & Machine Learning, Cybersecurity, Cloud, 5G Certification Program, and Game Development, among others, which offer assured placements. 

All these initiatives will greatly energise the skilling of India's youth. Between 2020 and 2025, India will require nine times the number of digitally skilled workers. In such a scenario, talent from the country's tier 2 and 3 cities will play a critical role in its growth and development. With work-from-anywhere flexibility enabled by technology and prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic, and new job opportunities boosting salaries in Tier 2 cities, the future looks bright for talent from beyond India's metros.

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