As skilling in the new and emerging technologies becomes the need of the hour for various industries, experts urge the Union Budget 2022 to pump more funds into a structured and comprehensive skilling programme.
Here’s what industry experts say:
Gaurav Gupta, Partner, Global Capability Centre Leader, Deloitte India
While the initial stages of Global Capability Centre (GCC) setup were mostly around basic skills and cost arbitrage, the GCCs now have a higher focus on digital and over 50 per cent of India-based GCCs are investing in emerging technologies. This has led to an increase in demand for talent with specialised skills in artificial intelligence, analytics, cloud, robotic process automation, machine learning, and internet of things, etc. India’s ability to attract GCCs in future will depend on availability of advanced skills in the digital space, hence the government should look at supporting stakeholders to open more institutions and labs that offer training/courses in these areas and also encourage current institutions to keep innovating their curriculum with active industry participation.
PS Viswanath, MD & CEO, Randstad India
According to a survey report by FICCI in 2021, at least 9 per cent Indians will be in jobs that do not exist currently and 37 per cent of the workforce will require radically changed skill sets to meet their employment demands. There is an urgent need to provide stimulus to the skill development sector. The pandemic has re-emphasised the need to re-skill as well as up-skill existing and potential workforce across levels and sectors particularly on digitisation skills. A higher outlay by the Centre on skill trainings for youth to make them job ready will help bridge the existing skill gaps in the job market.
Deval Singh, Business Head, Telecom, IT& ITes, Media and Government, TeamLease Services
Finding talent in 2022 will be tougher than it was in 2021. COVID has changed the world of work. The formal skill sets that is required by industries have undergone a shift. While for some the transformation was sudden but for many sectors it was in the offing and COVID has accentuated the growing skill gap. Therefore, the Union budget needs to focus on reskilling India faster than ever before. The Union Budget should focus on setting aside a clear program that helps groom our youth in new and emergent skills which can help in increasing the per capital income of every Indian household. These programmes should start at the grass root level at the universities not only in metros but even from tier 2, 3, 4 cities and offer better paying jobs. This kind of a structured, focussed approach will open up opportunities not only for rural India even for women and enable our youth to leverage the opportunities that will open up for them in the coming years.
Siddhartha Gupta, CEO, Mercer|Mettl
A formalisation of the Indian economy is happening and hence it’s expected that we will have a more structured approach to up-skilling, reskilling, and industry-academia collaboration led by India Inc. From an era of job scarcity, now an era of people scarcity is underway. People who can up-skill to be relevant will be scarce and be at a premium. Every company and individual has to think about re-learning. A budget of Rs 3,000 crore set aside by the government is just too less to have any perceptible impact on skill development for every industry.
Also read: Budget 2022: A sub-par track record of fiscal consolidation; will it change?
Also read: Budget 2022: Keeping eyes peeled for tax benefits on WFH allowance