NN46, September 2011
Towards a New Global World of Skills Development? TVET's turn to Make its Mark
The Geopolitics and Meaning of India’s Massive Skill Development Ambitions
By Kenneth King, University of Edinburgh, NORRAG
Email: kenneth.king@ed.ac.uk
Keywords: Eleventh Plan; 500 million skilled; role of the informal sector
Summary: The note seeks to explain what lies behind a country with one of the lowest levels of formal training in the world wishing to make its entire labour force skilled by 2022. What role does India’s shadow training system play in understanding the limits of this massive undertaking?
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India is no stranger to large numbers. But its current 11th Plan (2007-2012) has developed a scheme that appears to challenge even the wish lists of politicians. It has targeted increasing the proportion of formally and informally skilled workers in its total work-force from a mere 2% now to 50% by 2022, thus creating a 500 million strong resource pool. In this, it hopes to profit from a ‘demographic dividend’, gaining from the fact that its labour force is much younger than that in China and other competitor countries. It aims to supply the world’s future skill needs for some 50 million workers, apart from satisfying its own.
What lies behind this extraordinary ambition? What policies have produced these proposals for skilling almost half of India? How important is the perception of China’s substantial lead in skills development? How crucial has been the evidence that more than 90% of new jobs in India have been created in the informal sector? How critical has been the claim that such ‘training’ as has been available has been totally inadequate in terms of relevant theoretical knowledge? Equally important may be the modalities chosen for securing this skills goal. Why has the Government decided that a national vocational education qualification framework (NVEQF) could be essential to reaching its target? What is the implementation challenge with one year left in the 11th Plan. What have policy and politics achieved so far in the Plan’s most ambitious goal, - skills development?
We need also to ask about the meanings behind the recent dramatic rise of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in the policy agenda of India. What are the assumptions about the existing traditions and character of India’s culture or cultures of skills development? Is there in fact a shadow system of informal training covering most of the country? Is the massive planned expansion of skilled people in India simply more of the same, or is there a new paradigm involved? For instance how central will be the role of the private sector and of public private partnerships in the new skills training environment?
A further intriguing question must surely be this: how could India have achieved almost double-digit growth for years despite having a really tiny proportion of its workforce formally skilled? [Historically India has had an average quarterly GDP growth of 7.45% from 1997-2011.] This might suggest that it would be difficult to persuade the private sector dramatically to change gear and invest in training. The other paradox is that although the relative wages of workers with general secondary education have been increasing, the same has not been true of workers with technical and vocational education. According to the World Bank (2006), the evidence seems to point to a decline in the demand for workers with these very same skills (World Bank, 2006: 4-5).
There is no shortage of unique conditions, therefore, in seeking to understand why the world’s second largest nation in population terms (1.2 billion in 2011) should be proposing the largest ever expansion of skilled people in the next ten years. For good measure, we may add a last issue which is that India, amongst the so-called emerging donors, appears to be promoting overseas aid to TVET at a much higher rate than any other donor, including Brazil and China. What model of skill development is being proposed abroad when until recently so little was being done at home?
Some of the answers are in King’s longer paper to the UKFIET Oxford International Conference on Education, 13-15 September, and in the other papers in NN46, by Kumar, Master, Mehrotra, Sharma, Singh and Unni.
World Bank, 2006. Skill development in India. The vocational education and training system. Human Development Unit, South Asia, World Bank, New Delhi.
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Cite article as: King, K., (2011) ‘The Geopolitics and Meaning of India’s Massive Skill Development Ambitions’, in NORRAG NEWS, Towards a New Global World of Skills Development? TVET's turn to Make its Mark, No.46, September 2011, pp. 81-82, available: http://www.norrag.org
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