Disparity and Distortions
Vocational skill cry in wilderness
- Ms. Priyanka
What an irony where more than 90% of India's work population in the unorganized sector have inadequate support and little infrastructure. Globalization has knocked the door of high employability of skilled workers but we have nothing to offer except that of massive upsurge in BPOs & IT workers. IT sector being highly organized one, of course, has brought glory and money to nation. Whereas, informal sector, petty workers like plumbers, masons, electricians and mechanics continue to pose challenges of hiatus between demand and supply. This is glaring in metros and small townships as well. Industries and urban households request for skilled workers has grown to enormous proportions. Yet one does not get trained skilled workers in different trades, to meet the growing needs of the market economy.
With a shift to rural market, training of rural youth through vocational training centre, community polytechnic, state supported ITI needs a boost and momentum. Challenge lies in our struggle to meet the growing demand of upcoming manufacturing and service sector on one hand, repair, construction and maintenance requirment of growing infrastructure in trade, tourism, housing, roads and electricity etc. on the other, varieties of skills with quality are missing gap in our race to catch up the pace of globalization.
Of cource, Ministry of Labour, Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India, UNDP, GTZ and Technical Institutions have shown great deal of interest. Private player in corporate sectors and NGOs have yet to work out strategic partnership to address the growing concern.
It is also interesting to note, how to address the dilemma of enablers who are expected to empower the skilled workers with life coping skills along with their functional skills of survival and gainful livelihood. New skills would give them better income, gainful employment but would also uproot them from their villages to cities. They may find very difficult to accommodate and economicaly sustain in cities in a compelling and exorbitant swing of inflation. Thus slums would, therefore, increase in cities and town and rural areas would loose the productive human resource.
Are we engaged in developing double-edged tools to promote employability of rural youth. What kind of strategic interventions would be desirable to address the concern of such duality and paradoxes? We cannot afford to ignore the issue of depleting rural productivity and alienated youth of villages. Surveys of such vocational training courses indicate that they do not attract crowd for admission. Why there is no attraction and felt need among rural and suburb's youth to go for vocational courses? Why they fail to turn up for such programmes? We are addressing their need or we are purshing them to go for skill acquisition without adequate policy and proper certification programme? Do we have well equipped local resource trainer to offer such vocational courses to attract learners? We donot have solid answers to the above questions.
Informal economy has assumed critical significance in today's context. Let us be proactive to addresses the challenges of tomorrow. "Any discussion about skill development and training for the informal economy must begin with an appreciative mode out of a total work force of about 40 crores are in informal sector alone. The importance of the informal economy is further reinforced if one looks at its incremental share in employment (Table-1). This share has been rising stedily in recent times. It is sometimes argued that the entire incremental addition now may be due to informal economy. Table 2 : Share of Informal Economy in Incremental Net Domestic Product (at Current Price) and employment in India.
It is strongly believed that training and building competencies of human resource through their skill development drives us to concern of sustained economy growth. It also aims at reducing poverty levels and increasing income of the poor with a focus on overall social employment. But are we able to do that?
Share of Informal Economy : All India
Year
Share of Informal Economy in
Emplyment
Value Addtion (%)
1977-78
92.2
68.1
1982-83
92.1
66.4
1987-88
92.0
63.0
1990-91
92.2
63.8
1993-94
92.6
63.1
1997-98
--
60.5
Source : IAMR Manpower Profile Year Book 1999, New Delhi
Table-1
Share of Informal Economy in Incremental
Year
Share of Informal Economy in Incremental (%)
Net Domestic Product
Employment
1972-73/77-78
64.5
93.0
1977-78/82-83
65.0
91.0
1982-83/87-88
71.0
91.0
1987-88/90-91
58.0
95.0
1990-91/93-94
59.0
98.0
1993-94/97-98
57.0
--
Source : IAMR Manpower Profile Year Book 1999, New Delhi
Table-2
Thus key area of our concerns may be noted.
  • Infrastructure of capacity building very poor and well equipped.
  • Inadequate and well trained trainers at the ground level.
  • Short cources or part time module did not offer adequate knowledge & practice.
  • Programme is generally not felt need of youth.
  • Method and technique of training in appropriate.
  • Funding support to such training institutions limited and highly bureaucratized by the support agencies on price need basis.
  • Policy document short sighted vision for vocational skills.
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