What About Aspirations -- Cover Story Skills Ahead Magazine October 2011

8/3/2019 What About Aspirations -- Cover Story Skills Ahead Magazine October 2011

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12 SKILLS AHEAD | OCTOBER 2011

What aboutaspirations?

THE figures have been done to death. The skills fraternity knows

the target of 500 million persons to be skilled by heart now. As

Roy Newey, Group Board Director of A4e puts it, even in dreams

he sees that figure. But will the skills world get down to the task

of achieving that figure? And take care of quality, while ensur-

ing the quantity (numbers)? That was the question that was paramount at

the FICCI 4th Global Skills Summit held in New Delhi on September 15-16,

which was attended by the whos who of skills and vocational development

in India from Government and corporate sector, as well as British, German,

New Zealand and other foreign delegations. The formation of Sector Skills

Councils and framing of National Vocational Education Qualification Frame-

work constituted important talking points at the gathering, and much expe-rience sharing from foreign delegations happened on these themes.

But a fresh note was struck at the conference when, starting with RV

Kanoria, Sr Vice-President, FICCI, speakers and those in the audience raised

the question, amid this target setting and struggle to meet the numbers,

what happens to individual desires, aspirations and inclinations? Awareness about glitzy lifestyle has permeated

down to villages, and the youth of today cant be kept curtailed at lowest levels of manufacturing/ services. What

happens when a chauffeurs son doesnt want to remain

a driver or your cooks son doesnt want to remain a cook

but wants to do BA/ MA, ie wants a career progression?

Are we going to make provisions for these aspirations and

academic possibilities for a person pursuing vocational

field, or will a person, once a plumber, forever remain at

the same level? Because if not skilling the youth is callingfor demographic disaster, then not meeting their aspira-

tions will also feed into their frustration. In future dis-

courses on skills and vocational development, this career

and counseling aspect will have to be given due space.

The other area neglected in earlier conferences which

was duly emphasised was traditional arts and crafts. The

conference suggested some healthy models for providing

them livelihood, while retaining their esteem.

IN SEMINAR AFTER SEMINAR, THE HERCULEAN SKILLING TARGETS PROVIDE THE TALKING POINT.

THE 4TH GLOBAL SKILLS SUMMIT BY FICCI DEPARTED FROM THE TEMPLATE AND PROVIDED SPACE

FOR INDIVIDUAL DESIRES


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13OCTOBER 2011 | SKILLS AHEAD

Thoughts fromthe top

Agalaxy of skills stalwarts brainstormed these

issues. Emphasising the importance of skills

development, S Ramadorai, Adviser, PM National

Skills Development Council, said in his keynote address,

If we look around the globe, we find that nations that

have succeeded in tiding over the global economic slow-

down are those that have traditionally invested in skill

building. Countries like Germany are still doing well in a

highly-depressed European economy, due to their highly

skilled workforce. Lauding the IT industry example, he

said, A highly skilled workforce can be the passport to

Indias success. The IT industry is a standing example of

the success that can be ours, provided you have people

trained to global standards. Indian IT by default trained

for an overseas market, a market that was short on pro-

grammers. What began as a rudimentary work, today

has moved up to value adding, cutting edge innovation

because we showed that we could raise the bar at an

attractive price point.

But reminding the audience that career suitability was

essential, he said that while there were posters even in

rural areas inviting the youth to join IT courses, not

everyone is suited for the job, so we need to direct peo-

ple to other emerging opportunities as well. We need

world class plumbers, top class welders, well mannered

chauffeurs, trained domestics and healthcare workers.

There is a need to respect these skills and provide up-ward mobility so that people can see these as stepping

stones to further success.

He raised a pertinent point about artisans and

craftsmen, saying, Not being able to manage a liveli-

hood, many are doing menial jobs in programmes like

NREGA. Can we not find a better use of their talent? We

should either find them a better market connect for their

goods or migrate them into jobs where their dexterity

and creativity are leveraged.

He urged stakeholders in the skills field to extend

training support to states like MP, UP, Bihar, Rajasthan,

West Bengal and Orissa, where almost half of the popu-

lation resides, and to focus on skills related to agricul-ture like dairy, agro-processing and animal husbandry,

which will help generate local employment. He gave the

example of tribal district of Valsad in Gujarat, where

dairy farming reformed an entire tribal community.

In his inaugural address, Sharda Prasad, Director

General, DGET, expressed happiness that the skills agen-

da has moved from margins to the centrestage and from

largely Government sector to private sector. Also that

the number of ITIs has increased from about 5,000 in

2006-07 to 9,500 now, and DGETs own outlay has in-

creased form about 100 crore to about 1,200 crore per

annum. And the placement in ITIs has increased from 35

per cent in 2003 to 80-90 per cent in 2010-11. But he

stressed on the challenges of quantity, quality, relevanceand systematic reforms, and the solutions to these in the

form of NVQF, Sector Skills Councils and modernisation

of all the employment exchanges in PPP mode.

Dilip Chenoy, MD and CEO, National Skills

Development Corporation, described in detail the six sec-

tor skills councils which had been approved, besides oth-

ers which were yet to be approved; besides detailing the

33 projects of training providers that NSDC had cleared.

Talking of challenges, Chenoy also brought home the

point that brand awareness was necessary to remove the

social stigma. As of now skills means blue collar work,

and has low aspirations associated with it. He suggested

the following ways to bring about a change: Use of local opinion leaders and influencers

Spending time on counselling it is time well spent

Skill mapping and profiling

Availability of finance

Campaign to make vocational training aspirational

Let there be a national campaign to make skills

aspirational, he said, adding that events like WorldSkills

S Ramadorai, Adviser, PM National Skills Development Council


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Competition, which NSDC is coordinating this time, and

a Business Plan Competition focused on skill develop-

ment, would go a long way in attracting the youth.

At the same time he said higher salaries for trained

resources, and soft skills training as part of training

modules, would also add to the glamour quotient of

vocational fields.

Rt Hon David Blunkett, Member of Parliament, UK,

gave a new mantra to the gathering when he said that

the keywords in skilling should be delivery, delivery,

delivery. He warned India of repeating the mistake

that UK did in its skills development programme and

said that the UK ended up not skilling or reskilling butaccrediting what people already did. The real ambition

was not to accredit but to transform people with no

skills to highly-skilled, or those with basic skills to even

highly-educated.

Thomas Matussek, Ambassador of Germany to India,

linked the recent unrest in England to lack of prospects

for future, and said skills development provided hope

and social stability to countries.

In his valedictory address, Narendra Jadhav, Member,

Planning Commission, said the summit had taken place

at a very correct point of time as the approach paper to

12th Five Year Plan was being finalised and welcomed

the industry leaders present there to come forward with

suggestions. He said that while there will be fiscal con-

straint in the 12th Plan, education and skills, health and

infrastructure will be three priority areas and will get

high budgetary support at the cost of other areas. At thesame time he urged the industry leaders present there

not to miss an opportunity that comes once in a lifetime,

or else we will not have so many hands to work with, as

we will have mouths to feed.

Left: Rt Hon David Blunkett, Member of Parliament, UK; Right: Thomas Matussek, Ambassador of Germany to India

Best Skill Provider - Government Funded

Winner Apparel Training and Design Centre (ATDC)

Runner Up Kushal (CREDAI-PUNE NSDC Initiative)

Best Skill Provider - Bottom of the Pyramid

Winner ILF&S

Runner Up BASIX Academy for Building Lifelong Employability Limited

Best Skill Provider - Private

Winner NIIT Foundation

Runner Up Mannat Foundation Trust

Best UK India Partnership

Winner IndiaCan Education Private Limited

Runner Up IndiaSkills

AWARDS


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THE question of how to do it was amply

demonstrated in the case studies presented in the

summit, and in the exhibition held alongside.

Festo Didactic: Volker Schmid, Head of Business

Development, Asia/Pacific, made the presentation. Festo

is a leading provider of automation components, with di-

rect presence in 58 countries and representatives in fur-

ther 170 countries. The company has 14,800 employees.

Its learning arm Festo Didactic is seminar provider for

more than 35,000 participants per year, and provides in-

house solutions to companies. It is also the main sponsor

for mechatronics competition in WorldSkills. The com-

pany also has presence in India since 1963 Festo India.

The company is headquartered in Bangalore and has

seven own training centres. Its latest step in India is an

industrial training institute for Shalimar group.

While describing the how to of training, Schmid laid

emphasis on:

Layout: A training centre doesnt have to be dark.

Give it an image makeover so that the youth areproud to work in the shopfloor.

Broader area: By training in niche areas you close

opportunities. There has to be cross-sectional

training. Take care of cross-sectional needs.

Short-term: Dont go for long-term programmes in

the beginning. Start with short-term programmes to

gain confidence of the industry

Curricula: It cant be static and has to constant-

ly evolve. Dont go for static curricula, which is

difficult to change. Also, offer courses only after

understanding needs and requirements.

He concluded that confidence of the industry should

be benchmark of any training programme.

Vox centres: The presentation was made by Roy New-

ey, Group Board Director, A4e, which is running the

Vox centres. Vox means giving people voice. The Vox

centres in the UK tackle the problem of dropouts and

students above 12 years of age, who are misbehaving,

take drugs and are prone to other anti-social tenden-

cies. Vox has set up centres for these youth at the risk

of exclusion from education. Vox moves into a school

and sets up 3-4 classes in various vocational streams, say

hair-dressing, catering, hospitality, construction. Errant

students are given the incentive of finishing school work,

upon which they will be given the chance to attend the

vocational classes a few hours per week. So an element

of discipline is brought in in the school. Further, the

vocational training providers expect adult behaviour

from these students, and the experience is that youngpeople have responded positively. It brings out the best

in the youth, says Newey, who gives an example of a

young girl prone to drugs who is now enjoying her work

as a hair dresser.

Citing the success rate, Newey points that there is

92 per cent student retention; 72 per cent students are

getting at least one level qualification and 75 per cent

are showing progression in training, education or

Left: Volker Schmid of Festo Didactic; Right: Roy Newey, Group Board Director, A4e

Execution on ground


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employment. A4e is in talks with the MHRD to start

similar centres in India, Newey informsSkills Ahead.

Bradford College, UK: A team from Bradford College,

UK, made a presentation their training model. Talk-

ing to Skills Ahead, Ronnie Todd, Project Manager, de-

scribed how they are developing faculty infrastructure.

The college has 23,000 students and also trains 1,000

teachers per year at primary and secondary levels. The

college imparts training in practically all trades, and for

these trades, they invite industry practitioners, impart

them skills to become teachers and employ them fulltime. The college keeps sending them back to industry

for knowledge upgradation, through its 30-day profes-

sional development programme. Functional skills like nu-

meracy and enterprise are essential components of each

trade. Todd gives the example of course in photography,

wherein a student is taught not just how to take a great

picture but to convince the client why he should buy

that photograph. Todd informs that 99 per cent students

passing out of these programmes are either

self-employed or have the capacity to be self-employed.

Gujarat, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu: Representatives

from several Indian states showcased their success sto-ries. CV Som, Commissioner of Schools and Chief Ex-

ecutive Officer, Gujarat Knowledge Society, giving Tata

Nanos example, described how the company had recruit-

ed thousands of people for its project, and also trained

them. Going further, he described how the involvement

of industry in individual ITIs had turned these institutions

around. Thus L&T has trained 20,000 youth in construc-

tion trades like bar bending and masonry because it

requires a large manpower base. Similarly Toyota provides

Toyota certification to the candidates it trains. Describing

the Gujarat Knowledge Society, he informed that it runs

300 skill development courses, and the idea is to utilise

the infrastructure of schools, colleges, ITIs, polytechnics

and other institutes whenever these are free.

From Tamil Nadu, M Sakrapani, State Livelihood

Specialist, described Pudhu Vazhu Project, which has

enabled VII class pass candidates to earn `20,000 per

month. The project is participatory in nature, wherein

communities themselves identify the poorest of the poor

candidates to be trained. Training is done by the indus-

try. The project has involvement of companies like Nokia,

Samsung, HCL, St Gobain etc. 1.5 lakh people have al-

ready undergone training. Their earnings mean that `635

million is going to the villages, as earnings of the youth.

AK Sacheti, Project adviser, Rajasthan Mission on Skills

and Livelihood (RMoL), described that for this much pop-ular project, they had received about 2,000 applications

from ITCs, NGOs, professional institutes and corporates,

and only 63 were given approval, such was the strict cri-

teria adopted. And now there are only 19 providers in

the project. ICRA had been invited to identify the areas

where training will be required. And so, based upon its

findings, starting with initial 32 courses RMoL is now

running 192 courses, of 40 to 90 day duration. There is

a provision of tool kit, soft skills training and EDP as part

of the programme. As of now, 72,117 youth in the age

group of 16 to 35 have been trained in varied sectors like

food processing, mining, oil and gas.

Apparel Training and Design Centre (ATDC): This

organisation, under the aegis of Apparel Export Promo-

tion Council, got the award for Best Skill Provider Gov-

ernment Aided category, in the Global Summit. Talking

toSkills Ahead, Col (Retd) DP Dimri, National Coordina-

tor of SMART training project of ATDC, described both

the long-term and short-term programmes that they are

running to train manpower for the apparel sector.

Ronnie Todd (right) of Bradford College with Kathryn Oldale,

Vice Principal, Curriculum and Quality, Bradford

Re

ports

rele

ased


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GERMANYS International Marketing of Vocational

Education (iMOVE) was the Institutional partner at the

event and was a major presence at the summit. iM-

OVE is an initiative of the German Federal Ministry of Education

and Research and promotes international cooperation through

collaborations in education and skills development. In the

summit it shared its expertise on German skills setup and

structuring of Sector Skills Council.

A day before the summit iMOVE and FICCI jointly

organised a special India-Germany workshop on German

Vocational Education & Training in Specific Sectors Les-

sons for the Formation of Sector Skills Councils in India.

iMOVE has set up its office in India and will be proactively

fostering engagements in the field of technical education.

Earlier this year, it signed an MoU with NSDC for

transfer of know-how in this domain and to promote private sector

initiatives in India by bringing the stakeholders of the two

countries together.

Ulrich Meinecke, Counsellor, Social and Labour Affairs,

Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, informed Skills

Ahead that iMove, as part of an MoU with FICCI, will also

support it in the Sector Skills Councils that the industry body

is working on. At the same time, it is also working with IL&FS

in curriculum development and training of trainers in about

100 multi-skilled training institutes in Delhi-Mumbai corridor.

Similarly, the Festo Didactic-Shalimar project, which will come

to fruition around January, has also been enabled by iMOVE.

iMOVE moves to India

The long-term programmes, of more than six-month

duration, are now run under IGNOUs community col-

lege scheme, leading to an associate degree. The sec-

ond, shorter route is Skills for Manufacturing Apparels

through Research and Training (SMART) courses, target-ing 1.72 lakh BPL youth in the next five years. Since ATDC

comes under Apparel Export Promotion Council, under-

standing market demands, making changes in training

accordingly, and providing experienced trainers comes

easily to the institute. Across the country, in all locations,

the course content is streamlined and standardised.

There is a quality control team to control training quality

in all locations. The fact that there are no franchisees and

all the centres are own, also helps control quality. Col

Dimri tells that ATDC has 72 per cent placement record,

the remaining actually opting to become self-employed.

e-Jeevika: Richa Panday Mishra, Founder and CEO ofe-Jeevika, described her organisations philosophy and

work to Skills Ahead. e-Jeevika was an exhibitor at the

event. Its an IIT-incubated initiative and has presence in

Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, MP, UP, Punjab, Assam and Andhra.

Mishra says that when the target of 500 million Indians

to be trained is raised, the question that arises is, who

are they, where are they and what are their aspirations.

e-Jeevikas role is to locate those potential trainees, do

their competency mapping and provide these traineesto training providers. They go to rural areas, source the

human resources and connect youth to stakeholders like

training providers or employers. The work doesnt stop

at connecting the two ends. E-Jeevika also identifies their

skill gaps and suggests career paths, because, as Mishra

says, you cant force someone to take up a career against

his aptitude and inclination, NREGA having ensured at

least basic livelihood.

Richa Panday Mishra of e-Jeevika

Ulrich Meinecke from the German Embassy


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1. RCM Reddy, Chairman, FICCI SkillsDevelopment Forum, sets the agenda for theconference

2. Narendra Jadhav, Member, Planning Com-mission, discussed the 12th Five Year Plan

3. Dilip Chenoy, MD and CEO, NSDC, callsfor branding of skills through competitiveevents

4. The audience, in rapt attention

5. Paul Comyn, Senior VT and Skill Develop-ment Specialist, ILO Decent Work Team,

shares ILO perspective

6. A model of Vox centre on display in theexhibition area

7. A visitor in exhibition area, learning bydoing

8. Col Dimri of ATDC and his team receive theaward

9. Winners pose for a photo-op

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What About Aspirations -- Cover Story Skills Ahead Magazine October 2011

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