All industries, large, medium, small and micro
have a responsibility to build capacity for creating jobs and nation-building”
The
governments at the centre and at the state levels of every country are
responsible to provide infrastructure for job oriented professional education,
encouraging the setting up of job-oriented industries and providing
opportunities to its citizens to have suitable jobs and lead a good quality of
life. This will reduce the brain drain where young professionals in Asian
countries work hard to migrate in search of jobs in English speaking countries,
like the USA, UK, Canada and Australia. Every developing country like
India requires sound and progressive policies, development of infrastructure
and skill development centres for its human resources. Unfortunately,
infighting within the ruling political party and other political parties often
leads to the non-passage of any reform bill or amendment. A government formed
with the collation of two or more political partitas with different agendas is
often unable to take any hard decisions for fear of its collapse. Consequently,
much-needed reforms in job-oriented higher education; benefits to young
entrepreneurs and incentives to the private sectors for job creation remain
pending for a long. Such a weak government cannot negotiate a good deal for visa
issues with other countries or procure newer technologies for its faster advancement.
To bring such change, the country needs a stable government, which can take
bold decisions to improve the quality of education and industrialization. After
long waiting, GOI now has a strong and stable government, since 2014.
India has chosen a technology pathway to quickly transform India into Digital
India, which is based on emerging technologies. To achieve this goal by 2025, GOI
needs to implement some new policies as given below:
·
Fiscal policies. Have sound economic conditions, liberal
incentives and favourable tax policies to create more jobs, in various sectors
and services.
·
Research
and innovations. The industry should be
given incentives for supporting research work/innovation by the Academic institutions.
·
Industrial
Training. This component
must be increased to say 6 months for the 4-year degree program and
3 months for the 2-year diploma and say 3 months for one and Half year
Post Graduate program
·
Research
Grant to Academic Institutes. Liberal grants for research work by students, both for the
government as well as private institutes
·
Education
Policy. Governments both at the Centre
level as well as the State level, need to restructure education policies, both for
Secondary and Higher education, giving focus on issues which help the youth to
get suitable jobs. This will enable them to sustain their career and also
support their families. Since 2010, GOI has taken many initiatives in this
direction. GOI had brought in a new education policy – NEP
2020 which is more aligned to emerging
technologies and job creation Some actions by the GOI
which can empower more people to have job opportunities and contribute in
India/s economic growth are given below:
·
Set up more colleges,
institutes of science and technology, universities and hospitals in every
state/district. These institutions are both government-funded as well as the
private sector.
·
Government must facilitate
easy accessibility and affordability so that students from rural /remote areas
or those who are less privileged also get an opportunity for skill-based /
professional higher education.
·
The government should grant
recognition to online courses for skill-building so that working-class people
can enhance their job potential for promotion and growth.
·
Higher education regulating
bodies to ensure that higher education/ professional education is job
oriented. It should have 30% or more participation from the industrial
sector.
·
Quality assurance is
ensured by compulsory accreditation and certification by a competent authority.
Students seeking admission to professional colleges and universities should
look for accreditation of the institution by quality assurance bodies.
·
Academic curriculum should
be multi-disciplinary with scope for doing one major course and one or two
minor courses simultaneously. This enhances job selection and career switching
to mitigate uncertainty.
·
Learning-by-doing should be
more to make graduating students readily employable/billable so that recruiting
company spends minimum resources for hands-on training.
·
Currency Bill, 2021 (Crypto
Bill), which was included in the agenda of the Lower House of Parliament
monsoon session 2021 is expected to be passed by winter session 2022. This
delay is due to some fears of the security of financial transactions.
Industrialization
policy. The government should set
up job-oriented industries in close vicinity of educational institutions.
Encourage private investors to set up their industries close to educational
institutes where students could visit for job orientation and do industrial
training during summer break or do basic training prior to joining a job. Some
important aspects of industrialisation policy should include:
·
Provide incentives to the
industries for adopting educational institutions and have close interaction.
This will facilitate doing joint research, experimentation /innovations and
absorbing students on merit.
·
Have sufficient numbers of
Hospitals, Medical colleges, Health clinics and Laboratories to provide
training to the students.
·
Have industries in
rural and remote areas to provide jobs to the youth. A country like India with a
1.25 billion population and 60% of its youth under 30 years of age, needs to
expand construction and manufacturing activities to generate millions of jobs
every year. In its budget for 2018-2019, India has planned 2.5 million jobs.
·
Public, Private
Participation (PPP) Scheme is very effective for job oriented higher education.
It should be a major initiative by both governments at the centre and state
levels to incentivize academic institutes and industries for establishing an
effective interface. They could jointly develop curricula and
projects/products.
·
Provide good roads/ rail
infrastructure to various workplaces and industrial hubs. Job goers
should be able to travel fast and with comfort to safely reach their workplace
and return to their place of living.
·
Simplify the process of
issuing passports to aspirants, for moving to other counties. Facilitate issuing
of visas by countries, where good opportunities are available for professional
education/jobs.
·
Make its embassies more
effective to promote higher education and security to its nationals.
Technology for Economic
Growth. It is easy to predict
sectors in which automation might take away labour-intensive jobs. However, it
is now well recognised that as some labour intensive jobs are lost, new jobs
requiring new skill sets will emerge.
Job creation due to AI and IT. The techno experts and owners of high tech
facilities emphasize that technology will save in time, effort, and
cost and improve consistency, productivity and quality of products/services.
It’s about enabling existing manpower to adopt new technologies rather than
replacing them. Few technical companies have confirmed that with the
introduction of AI, their productivity and efficiency had gone up. For
instance, Accenture has managed to automate 17,000 jobs till 2016
without any cut in existing staff and by 2017, they have automated 25,000
jobs. Likewise another market research company, Forrester has highlighted that
by 2025, 16% of US jobs will be replaced, while the equivalent of 9% of jobs
will be created. Therefore net job loss will be only 7%. Some positive
impact of technology on job creation and productivity is indicated in the
succeeding paragraphs.
·
Radiology. Dr Barani, of San Francisco, states
that Enclitic technology empowers even average practitioners to be
experts. Therefore, instead of making some of them lose their jobs,
the technology helps them to fill the shortage of specialists.
·
Self-driven vehicles.
Self-driven vehicles may need remote operators to cope with emergencies.
·
Human
Touch. Despite the use of
advanced AI, ML and Robotics, some jobs are always likely to be better done by
humans, where empathy is needed. Doctors, therapists, hairdressers and personal
trainers fall into that category. Analysis of the British workforce by experts
at Deloitte has highlighted the significant rise in health care jobs of
nursing, technical assistants and care-workers.
·
learning
new skills. Unlike previous waves
of automation where workers could switch from one kind of routine job to
another job; now many workers will have to switch from routine unskilled jobs
to non-routine skilled jobs, to stay relevant to the industry. That makes it
more important for all workers to acquire new skills and gain proficiency
quickly.
AI
has been gaining a lot of momentum since 2005 and some people feel threatened
about their jobs being taken away by AI. This is just an apprehension by those
who are a bit lazy to upgrade their knowledge and add AI to supplement their
skills. The idea that routine manual work can be carried out by a machine is
quite old and well known. AI-based machines can perform tasks which were
earlier done by the knowledge workforce. We all know that computer/logic
controlled machines can do many forms of routine manual tasks, but now these
machines are able to perform some routine cognitive tasks too.
There is no need to think that technology is a
threat to your job and panic. We must
appreciate that technology momentum is going to stay and rapidly grow further.
It is our responsibility to harness emerging technologies properly and enhance the productivity, efficacy and quality of our products/services. Technology is
growing rapidly to support and enhance in every field like e-governance,
navigation, manufacturing, processing industry, transportation, education in
universities, healthcare in hospitals, digital marketing, Supply Chain
Management (SCM) or Customer Relation Management ( CRM). This trend will
continue at a much faster pace than evolving new rules, regulations, operating
procedures and business practices. However, if you are proactive,
have the required knowledge, and skills and are adaptable to quick learning of emerging
technologies, the jobs will be always available to you.
Summary. The government both at the Center and State levels must
facilitate Technology Collaboration, Technology Transfer and Integration for
job creation and success. The national policies on Human Resource Development
(HRD), both at the centre and state level, must cater for adequate funding
of technology-based and job-oriented education programs. The educational
institutes/colleges and universities should procure and deploy new
technology-based infrastructure to offer diploma, degree and postgraduate
programs, which are marketable so that passing out students are adequately
equipped with required newer skills. This will make them readily employable and
billable from day one. The government should also invite private
companies to participate under – Public Private Participation (PPP) for
technological research and higher education. India has the largest
younger population and holds great promise to the world in providing young
manpower that is highly skilled in emerging technologies. The Government Of
India (GOI) has taken many initiatives for Digital Transformation and
introducing emerging technologies and staying ahead among emerging Digitals
Economies of the world
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