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Need for skills development authority

— FILE PHOTO

RECRUITMENT SPREE: Students at the campus placement programme organised by Anna University in Chennai.

On the one hand, political parties criticise the Central and State governments for the growing unemployment problem, for not generating enough jobs. On the other hand, industry and trade complain about manpower shortages, especially in the technical and skilled sectors.

At least over the past three years, when the Indian economy has climbed to new heights, industry appears to have been caught unawares in preparing for such an expansion mode.

As a result, the high potential employment sectors such as information technology (IT) and ITES may be opting for Finishing schools to provide for some basic training to fresh recruits before they take up employment.

But industry as a whole wants a Skills Development Authority to be set up to deal with this real problem on hand.

The IT and ITES sectors project a requirement of about two million jobs over the next two to three years. The Financial Services sector, still very nascent in the country, may need up to one million hands annually over the next five years accord to Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Vice President K. V. Kamath, who is also the ICICI chief.

CII President Sunil Mittal concedes that industry may be two or three years behind, but appears geared to catch up with the needs over the next two to three years.

Both of them emphasise the need for industry-academia partnership to meet this demand and provide a qualitative improvement to the graduates and postgraduates churned out by the universities and institutes.

The emphasis should be on ‘employability’ and training in required skills — may be even industry-wise.

Officials at CII say that a skills development programme has been launched in many regions, though in a limited way.

Depending on the regional needs and tie-ups between industry and institutes, this drive must expand and spread within each region. But compared to the projections in demand, the response seems to be very limited.

Industry sources say that the IT and ITES sectors have been virtually sucking in all the engineering and computer science graduates with a certain level of proficiency, across the country, over the past three years.

Their campus placement and recruitment drives have been absorbing most of the students with a creditable academic record.

Some of these units have gone to the now popular job fairs to scout for more talent. “When the demand is so high even in the major centres, you can imagine the requirement when the IT and ITES companies move into the second tier towns in some of the States such as Haryana, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

“On an average, a large and medium sized company now recruits 30,000 to 40,000 graduates a year and this figure will climb. More companies are coming in and more foreign firms are setting up their own BPOs or going in for outsourcing,” explains a senior human resources manager, who runs the campus placement programme in two of the southern States for an IT major.

Leaving alone the IT sector, even the textile industry in Tamil Nadu, including the export-oriented hosiery segment in Tirupur, badly needs skilled and semi-skilled manpower.

Manufacturers in the Coimbatore region have run out of steam and hands after a recruitment drive that brought in thousands of migrant workers from the southern districts of the State. Now, workers from Bihar are moving into this part of the country and attempts are being made to organise this effort, estimate the industry’s requirement, and provide some basic training to them before they come down South.

But the general consensus appears to be that industry-institute partnership has just not grown enough.

“There are oases in the deserts, but the successful tie-ups are few and far between. They are highly localised and tuned to a particular industry or group.

“We need a much more broad-based partnership in place. It may require a catalyst to ignite this programme all over again to make it relevant to present-day needs and match the requirements of industry,” observes the HR manager

V. JAYANTH

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