"Indian job market needs geometric progression leap to contain aspirations of 65% population"

Dr. S.S. Mantha, Former Chairman, AICTE writes about correlation between  employment, skills and jobs and changes needed to improve the quality of technical education...

A recent report of CRISIL pegs 13 million job aspirants against five million jobs created each year in both organised and unorganised sector in India. This leaves a gap of eight million each year. The share of jobs for engineers in this is anybody’s guess due to the absence of credible data. Seen cumulatively, are we staring at something more expansive? With GDP coming down, this gap would only increase in the future. No wonder, the supply side suffers in this ‘educated vs job availability’ equation. Lack of adequate skills makes the problem even more critical.
Instead of an assured employment in the private or a public sector, an innovative business initiative may be a way out. Netflix, for example, disrupted the video rental industry to the point the neighbourhood video store is basically a thing of the past.

Data speaks
The National Employability Report (NER), 2013 of Aspiring Minds, a New Delhi–based employment solutions company, reported in 2013, that 47 percent of the graduates are not employable in any sector of the knowledge economy. India Today reported in July 2016, that the same group conducted an employability-focused study based on 150,000 engineering students and found barely seven percent suitable for core engineering jobs. A key finding of the 2016 NER, has been that the employability figures were 17.91 percent, 3.67 percent and 40.57 percent respectively for IT (Information Technology) Services, IT Products, and Business Process outsourcing. This was only a shade different from the figures in 2013.
Since the sectors covered are IT and Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES), it will also be interesting to know the effect of large-scale automation, use of artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligent agents that have almost dried up the entry-level jobs in this sector. The IT sector, as it is, in the throes of headwinds. All these figures hide more than they actually reveal. The findings need to be seen in the context in which they were created for both, concerns and positives to emerge along with several important insights.
It is anybody’s guess, sometimes scary to imagine the plight of graduates of other disciplines and their employability in this scenario. India’s job markets need to take a leap in geometric progression in coming years if we were to contain the aspirations of 65 percent of the population below the age of 30 years. This would mean creating at least 15 million jobs this year that grows at a rate of a minimum of 3.5 to 4 percent each year, a tall order indeed.

Problems of quality and employment
Let me put forth two suggestions - one to improve quality and the other that concerns employment.
If we were to raise the bar from 45 to 75 percent at the qualifying examination to get an admission to an engineering college, it would effectively mean that the bottom of the pyramid is knocked out. The quality of technical education would improve since the students in the 75 percent and above bracket would only be eligible to pursue technical education. The institutions at the bottom of the ladder would close for lack of students.
The employability would also be better due to better stock and relatively lesser competition. Every solution or problem, depending on which side you are interested in, has a flip side. This postulation too assumes that anybody who has probably failed to pass the qualifying examination, has no right to ever redeem oneself, notwithstanding the premium placed on concerns of equity and access and the inability of the system to cater to such societal concerns. In the absence of any worthwhile future, these children would navigate to the so-called distance education, legal or illegal and be exploited by the fly by night operators. Social inclusion would be affected since the entry level for socially disadvantaged groups would also have to be hiked to at least 70%, commensurate with other such interventions.

A possible dead end?
Inequalities afflict the country in education and employment based on caste, ethnicity and even gender. How this dilemma would be addressed when the bar is raised is anybody’s guess and I am sure this postulation would never pass the muster on political grounds or otherwise. Why do we then indulge in finding answers where there are going to be none? However, it is not my contention that the system does not need a re-look in terms of quality.
The second suggestion for improving employment is based on the current data available on jobs, which is sketchy. Is there any credible report available on jobs, sector and year-wise, by any of the industry bodies today? In the absence of such data, assuming half a million jobs are available each year and theorising that a little more than half a million graduates would be allowed to progress out of the system each year and by implication, close down rest of the colleges, since there would be no employment opportunities, would we be serving the national cause?

Change of perceptions
The report also suggests that only 3.84% of engineers qualify for a start-up technology role which is a big concern and would surely hamper the growth of start-ups in India. This, of course, can survive only in an enabling start-up environment. We need to have better and more endowed children pursuing higher education and increase massively the employment opportunities. For our economy to thrive there must be competition, growth, and innovation. Successful entrepreneurs tend to be naturally competitive, think out of the box, and see through many of the easy answers.