India should make use of its demographic dividend to enhance productivity, says Skills Secretary Atul Kumar Tiwari
“We have a window during which our working age population is growing. During this time, there will be a situation, which comes once in a millennia, where India will have more young people than the old people,” Tiwari said on Wednesday while speaking at the Global Economic Policy Forum 2024 organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
“We will have a huge cohort of the young people who need to be employed so that we harness their energy and expertise to increase our productivity,” he said, adding this has made skilling and labor employment so important, bringing focus on creating human infrastructure rather than physical infrastructure.
“It is a very, very challenging and epochal moment for India as a country. The onus lies with the industry as well as academia and all of us working together, taking advantage of this demographic dividend,” he said.
Commenting on the upgradation of industrial training institutes (ITIs) scheme announced in the Union Budget 2024-25 as part of the Rs 2 lakh crore employment-linked incentive scheme, Tiwari said the ministry of skills development and entrepreneurship is working overnight to bring the industry, state governments and central government in three is to two is to one ratio, so that we create the aspirational level of skilling centers.
“Not something which we have thought of, but something much better and aspirational which has not been tried so far. So that is our ambition, which we are trying to do,” he said.Talking about the Global Capability Centres (GCCs), Tiwari said GCC is a very good example of how, using the technology, we create the skilled workforce right here in India, without bothering about the passports and the xenophobic interest that the outside world has at different times, suggesting an opportunity for India’s youth there as well.Outlining the three mantras of the government to make India the skills capital of the world, to impart both education and skills training to our youth and to ensure lifelong learning through skilling, reskilling and upskilling, Tiwari said all efforts would converge to skill India’s young workforce to cater to the global workforce requirement.
