The price the Indian economy has paid for under-investment in VET has been catastrophic. Shopfloor productivity in industry is one-third to one-tenth of China and OECD countries. PERHAPS BECAUSE of deep-rooted prejudices buried in the pernicious Hindu caste system, hands-on vocational education which would have upskilled the population, didn’t receive any worthwhile attention during the first half century since independence. Only in the new millennium after a small band of prescient educationists (and EducationWorld) began highlighting this gaping lacuna in the country’s education ecosystem and connected it with the rock-bottom productivity of Indian agriculture, industry and labour, did the establishment in New Delhi wake up to the need to factor vocational skilling into the education system. Although ITIs (Industrial Training Institutes) were established by the Central government to train and skill shopfloor workers in the early years after independence, not only were they too few in number, they were also the step-children of the Union labour ministry and were saddled with outmoded syllabuses and technologies. But driven by persistent criticism from the said minority of educationists, in 2009 the Congress-led UPA-II government belatedly established the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) with the mandate to rapidly skill the country’s population. NSDC’s mission is to build a sustainable ecosystem and promote skills development through provision of long-term loans to private sector vocational education and training (VET) firms, set up sector skill councils with employer engagement to prescribe standards and benchmarks, accredit training institutions to certify trainees, and encourage industry to employ trained personnel. Refreshingly, instead of a retired bureaucrat, in a moment of lucidity UPA-II appointed S. Ramadorai, vice chairman and hitherto chief executive of Tata Consultancy Services — India’s #1 IT software and services company — and invested him with cabinet status to get NSDC off the ground. The corporation’s mandate is to ensure that private sector VET providers skill 150 million youth and workers by year 2020. “for indians and india to prosper, it is necessary that long-term planning of education and training should allow 90-95 percent of the population to learn a skill, a trade or a competence. In fast developing nations such as China, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and developed countries — Japan, Germany, Korea, Taiwan, UK, Australia, Canada — this is the reality. At any given time, at least 5 percent of the total population should be receiving some sort of VET. This translates into 55 million people getting VET in India,” vocational education evangelist Krishan Khanna told EducationWorld earlier this year when this publication featured a major cover story titled ‘India’s belated skilling revolution’ (EW April). An alumnus of IIT-Kharagpur and promoter of two BSE-listed companies (Hoganas India and Denora India), Khanna quit the corporate world in 1992 to morph into a pioneer VET evangelist. The same year he promoted iWatch, an NGO which has played a major role in impacting the importance of VET education upon the Central and state governments and the public (including EducationWorld). According to iWatch, currently 90 million youth are enrolled in 500,000 VET institutions…
