Employability gaps puncture India’s talent pool claim

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: Almost 60% of India’s population is below the age of 25 years. Couple this with the huge appetite for education—India produces 3,00,000 engineering graduates every year which is 25% of the total produced across the world. The state of Tamil Nadu alone produces 75,000 engineers which is double that of the total number of engineers who graduate every year in the US. With the demography turning adverse in the western world, where the population is aging fast, India’s skilled manpower should be its greatest asset and the country should be at the centre of the knowledge economy—theoretically speaking. But in reality, this phenomenon is only partly true.

Gaps in employability has meant that only a small portion of this educated mass is fit for ‘plug and play’ and a large section of those coming out of colleges need to be trained comprehensively. The quality and the relevance of the kind of education that is being done is the cause says Mr PK Mohapatra, member of the management board of RPG Enterprises and chairman, education sub-committee of the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII). He was speaking at a management colloquium on ‘Employment & Employability in the Knowledge Era’ organised recently by Ma Foi, a leading manpower consulting agency.

One of the major reasons for this, he says, is the stranglehold the government has on education despite many years into liberalisation. Private education has been smothered at every available opportunity and the net result is—obsolete subjects, textbooks remaining unchanged for 30 years, irrelevant courses etc. Also, over the years practical knowledge has given way to theoretical subjects. Thus students who complete the graduation have to be given practical training to make them fit to enter a factory/office. Scores of business schools claim that they produce future CEOs but in reality, they churn out students who are unemployable, he added.

Then there is the quality of teachers. According to Mr Mohapatra, 75% of the professors who teach engineering graduates have not seen the interiors of a factory. Also for many students getting a degree is an end game in itself. They do not seem to plan their education in line with their job aspirations. Both elements, education and employment, continue to remain mutually exclusive. He also debunked the English language skill by saying that only top 20% are employable on that criterion.