'Eduskills will become India's mainstay'

After Make in India, Skill India is the talk of the town. BT's Chitra Narayanan catches up with Globsyn Group's Founder and Executive Chairman, Bikram Dasgupta, an IT veteran and co-founder of PCL, who now is an entrepreneur in the skills sector. Excerpts-

Q- If you are an entrepreneur in the skills sector, how do you identify which skills to get into?

A- During the UPA time, they let the entrepreneurs decide. We identified the opportunity based on numbers. So, if 25 lakh people were going to be skilled, and of that nine lakh were in banking, we would go for banking because there was a good chance of getting the numbers. This government has done a Skills Gap study. It has looked at regions to find out what skills are needed and mapped them. But, I think skills gap is a myth because, when 200 million people have to be skilled, we need skills in every area.

Q- Educate India or Skill India, which is better?

A- The need for education and skills has a convergence point. Education is conceptual learning, to be used for strategic outputs in life. Skills is tactical knowledge to implement specific works. In 2012, I took a bet that Eduskills is going to be India's mainstay in three to five years. This government has come out with the National Skills Qualification Framework, which is nothing but eduskills. So they are saying 1,000 hours of the skill of day, and 600 hours of management, put together and align it to the NSQF and what you get is the new MBA. By doing this what they are doing is they are putting far more numbers in the qualified framework.

Q- Is the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana old wine in a new bottle?

A- This scheme is stronger on implementation norms. It is creating an ecosystem of governance and delivery to ensure high-quality training is given.