I was in Africa for the past couple of years and had the opportunity to extensively travel in both Anglophone and Francophone countries. For those who are not very familiar with Africa, I may point out that it consists of 54 countries and each country has several tribes, languages and cultural ethos. What struck me during my visits to these countries was the deep inroads made by China in every sphere of society and its near-complete financial domination of the African market. While in India we often deride Chinese products as cheap and of no real worth the stunning success of its capture of the most lucrative African market has lots of lessons for us. On this short note, I would like to compare the Chinese vocational Training system with our Indian experience.

As per recent statistics, almost all children in China are completing lower secondary education with a uniform 9 years of schooling. The quality of our school teachers leaves a lot to be desired. recently a TV channel interviewed a few school teachers from Bihar who were unable to name the President and the prime minister of India! Please watch this video....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNf3RIRMQbw

Increasingly more and more students continue their upper secondary education in China. More than 20 million youth are in the vocational school system. Tragically in India, we are still debating how many youths need to be trained by 2022. The earlier figure of 500 million has been challenged and drastically reduced by the Ministry of Skill Development, Government of India to 400 million. One wonders how all of a sudden 100 million vanished. So it's all really a statistical jugglery. It is my firm belief that a very weak primary education system in India has resulted in a rickety foundation. In the very latest update, the Ministry of Skills Development and Entrepreneurship has completely abandoned its claim of churning out 400 million youth by 2022. "We don’t want to chase any number. Whether it is 150 million by the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and 350 million by ministries — we are de-linking it, not attaching any number,” said Rajesh Aggarwal, director-general of training and a joint secretary in the skills ministry."(http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/govt-abandons-goal-of-training-500-million-people-in-new-skills-by-2022/story-XLtoXAEyrQjU4EMd8ZjMPM.html).

This is a classic case of what is popularly known as the " Planning Fallacy"- The tendency to believe your own project will proceed as planned even if similar tasks have run late is called planning fallacy – a term coined by Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman and another psychologist Amos Tversky in the 1970s.

In a famous example, planners originally estimated the iconic Sydney Opera House would be completed by 1963 at a cost of A$7 million. A scaled-down version was finally completed in 1973 for A$102 million, an entire decade later and 1,475% over budget. In India, examples are galore in every walk of life where original predictions about the completion of a bridge, building, mission, or road construction and the final outcome had absolutely no co-relation. So no wonder that even in estimating our capability and competence for training the huge volume of youth and the absorbing capacity of the industries we have literally gone berserk.

If the primary and secondary schooling is not up to the mark the story of our engineering and medical colleges is more shocking. Due to political patronage hundreds of medical and engineering colleges sprung up all over the country but mainly in our southern states. They looted the students by taking exorbitant fees. In many instances, cow shades and rickety buildings were used as labs. No wonder the so-called graduates of such institutions are good for nothing in the job market. In China vocational education has been made free and this has resulted in a large number of students completing their schooling. More importantly, the teachers in the vocational schools have to compulsorily undergo one month of industry exposure to get a real feel of the industry. Also, the practising managers are offered part-time jobs in vocational schools.

The Ministry needs to be very proactive in coming out with the policy options and it is absolutely necessary that the Secretary and Joint secretaries managing the department are not shifted to other departments. Loss of continuity is very costly. The National Skill Development Corporation has to shed its image of a soft loan banking organization and get into real skilling. And it has to act fast. Unfortunately on both these parameters, its track record is not very inspiring. A typical proposal for funding from a training partner takes anywhere between 8 to 12 months to get clearance. Why? Because it has to go through legal, financial and technical due diligence by third-party auditors. Then it has to go through the Project Approval Committee, and then to the management for final clearance. One wonders why it cannot have an empowered group that in one sitting can clear the proposal. Also with the recent departure of its top management, everyone in NSDC is loathe to take quick decisions and that is further delaying the approvals. All in all not a very promising situation. To sum up in my view following steps are needed to be taken on a war footing if skilling has to result in tangible gains to the youth and the society.

  • Creation of a standard expectation of a minimum period of workplace training as an element of secondary vocational education and training.
  • Consider carefully the impact of financial incentives taking into account its limited impact and wide misuse.
  • Establish a standard agreement or contract for workplace training to confirm the rights and obligations of the trainees and the training partners
  • Give support to NSDC to take quick decisions and encourage the officers to get into real skilling than outsourcing everything except doling out soft loans after the training partner is completely exhausted.

Above all what is the need of the hour is to get active participation of the industry in the Vocational education space as they are the ultimate beneficiaries. The Sector Skills Council (SSC) was mandated to do this. But here again, it's a story of an experiment gone awry. A recent report on the functioning of the SSCs concludes that over 40 SSCs are overlapping in their role and are serving no real purpose. This committee further observed that too many agencies like NSDC, National Skill Development Authority (NSDA), National Skills Qualification Committee (NSQA), National Council for Vocational Training (NSVT), and Directorate General for Training (DGT) are duplicating their functions resulting in " Skills Chaos".

The huge expectations created by the government in the minds of youth that they will get gainful employment in India as well as in the overseas market through proper training and certification need to be met quickly. We have to realize that we are sitting on a time bomb that is waiting to explode if these expectations get jolted due to misplaced priorities, faulty alignment and lack of appreciation of the ground realities- three major areas where the Chinese have scored over Indians globally.