Youth Unemployment ? That's a different story !

Unemployment in countries is a common phenomenon and the prominent agenda for political parties to win votes in any country across the world.

India is witnessing a major unemployment crisis in this time period and a series of scams which made a hole in the country's economy. 

Afghanistan President who was a key speaker at Lovely Professional Unversity's Convocation Summit in 2014 said India had one of the best education systems in the world and interestingly he completed his education up to 10th class in India. 

India has given birth to more no. of CEOs than any other company. A leading majority of Fortune 500 companies had Indian CEOs. Those companies continue to hire talent every year from India too. 

That's the story of Premium education, but all that glitters is not gold. The scenario is different for people who got an education from institutes other than the above mentioned. If we dig deeper the scenario of rural education is even worst. In Punjab, 60 out of 100 people who join primary schools drop out before completing their 10th standard said a school head master.

Rapid generation shift, technological implementation, poor education curriculum, no responsible education stakeholders, low motivation, low clarity regarding dreams, lack of right government support, false promises during the election rallies, the reluctance of aspirants to work on available jobs, unwillingness to work on low salaries or low levels, adamant to work on jobs unrelated to their education, appearing for government examination, lack of basic skills, waiting to think about which career to choose, all these have extensively contributed towards unemployment in India. 

Every day more than 3500 job seekers come out in the market. Only less than 50% of that no. get jobs in that year and the remaining are transferred to next year with the new set of job seekers, this cycle repeat over past 12-15 years and now the total has come up to 4 crores unemployed youth who are not useful for the country. 

SAARC, G20, 3rd world countries said that India has the largest demographic dividend(working population in the age group of 21-35 years) across the world. In addition to that, the IMF said that India has the largest youth inactivity across the world. This set of an audience is not even contributing to the GDP of the country. 

Analyzing this situation the then Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh set up the National Skills Development mission. It was a low affair during his term in the office. It was the same agenda which BJP was popularising in its elections to create job opportunities if came in power. 

It launched its first campaign for Make In India to invite the world to manufacture in India and it realized the shortage of skilled workforce, which again launched Skill India for upskilling of Unemployed youth.

In 2014, BJP came into power by winning the elections with the highest margin ever over INC. The BJP government modi-fied the National Skill Development mission to NSDC - National Skills Development Corporation and launched a portal for free skilling. 

The platform was a universe in itself as it had training partners, trainers, and job seekers together on one platform. There were a plethora of courses but the main focus was into English, Communication Skills, MS Office, Interview Skills and Soft Skills. 

The trainers were given salaries by training partners, who were again paid by the government on the basis of no. of aspirants enrolled and trained. 

With this, the finance and corporate Affairs Ministry made it mandatory for companies to spend 3% of their 3 years net profit towards welfare activities in society. 

This took the social industry by storm and millions of funds flooded in non-profits organizations and some companies set up their own CSR wings, even some financially supported NGOs and during the initial period, it was just a money spending activity. 

It looked like a win-win situation for the government, for corporations, for job seekers. But over a period of time, the stakeholders realized it wasn't working. The skilling was a wide market to cater to but only English, communication skills, personality development, Soft Skills were given prominence and the CSR initiatives of companies who were imparting the training were themselves reluctant to hire these skilled candidates due to lack of quality in them and their inability to do the jobs except Data Entry, BPO, Tele callers, Sales, etc which were more of blue-collar than normal white collar jobs.

In 2017, the focus was shifted towards enhancing the quality of courses and job placements. Companies in industries like Retail, Beauty and Wellness, BPOs, etc came forward to hire these trained candidates as it was more customer-facing roles and these industries have more than 40% attrition and in some cases 60% attrition too. 

The training partners were the ones who got benefited due to this initiative of the government. They had nothing to do except provide a place for training to these aspirants who were registered and allotted by the government. For each aspirant, they could earn around Rs 4000 maximum. Some person who I  was observing made so much money that they could build two houses and bought a car within 1 year of the launch of NSDC.

The companies in order to comply with the statutory rule of spending 3% of its profits had already started partnering with NGO or branded chain of local training businesses or some even set up their own centers to skill up the aspirants. They even boycotted the government provided curriculum and implemented their own curriculum which was partially matching the industry standards. Examples like ICICI Academy for Skills, MagicBus, NIIT Udaan viz. 

In late 2017, NSDC could generate placements for only 16 lakh youth out of 3 crore people training in that year. This made NSDC create their own skilling centers scrapping all affiliated centers which were poor in delivering quality. PMKVY was launched and scaled up across the nation which had the principle to ensure quality, industry relevant curriculum, provide skill for all for free, focus on placements. Initially, it was crowded with aspirational no.s and this inspired the state governments to implement in their states as well. Prominent names include TASK by Telangana Govt, Odisha Skills, Kerala Academy for Skills, Punjab Skill Development Mission namely. 

PMKVY too was not too successful in providing the skills and placements to the aspirants and was also failing. The Make In India initiative inspired foreign companies to manufacture in India but could not find proper talent and workforce to start operations which led them to set up their own expertise of skilling in healthcare which gave a new dimension towards skilling but took a long time to realize its potential. Similar was the case with Apollo Hospitals which scouted for partners to skilling on their curriculum and couldn't find anyone and its now the top-notch healthcare skilling agency in India. A proven success model for healthcare education and placement for its aspirants. 

During this crisis, as it was no. game for each company to show their results on the basis they started luring aspirants on the count of giving money. Remember earlier it was free and now the same aspirants are getting money to get skilled for their own career. The amount was in the range of Rs 1000 to Rs 12,000 to maximum. This could be helped them in 2 ways, one to increase their no. and two increase awareness in the community. 

Some companies rather than partnering with NGOs or other organization started providing their products for free like SAP, AWS, Linux, Cisco, Fair & Lovely Foundation, Swayam(govt initiative), have done it on their part to give back to the society through which they have got benefited. 

In late 2018, by eradicating all of which has been established the government again rebranded NSDC into a separate ministry named National Skill Development Ministry. It had a mission of monitoring the entire industry and maintain a level playing field for all the initiatives and seek proper approvals and suggestions from the Ministry. Its focus was also to initiate a mechanism where the aspirants passing out would be assessed by the assessor from the Ministry and the players to vet their content and curriculum. This brings a ray of hope in the skilling industry, although a major part of it was streamlined by making it a separate ministry the aspirants have already lost hope from these initiatives. What more could be done for them when they didn't get what they wanted and when they wanted. This is yet to be unfolded. 

Let's look at the various perspectives and what did it not worked for them. 

The perspective of aspirants - 

• There was a stream of joy during the election campaign which said jobs to the 1 crore youth. 
• Aspirants wanted jobs and didn't want skills although enrolled based the influence PM Modi had on youth
• The kind of job provided by these initiatives started from rs 6000 which was below acceptance level as the government says rs 300 -350 i.e. rs 9000 to Rs 9500 is what every person require to live a basic quality life in India but that was not getting fulfilled here. 
• The jobs which were provided in Retail, BPO, Beauty and Wellness etc were they, however, where getting and enrolling for these courses by NSDC didn't have any impact over their careers.
• There was a mismatch between the level of education and expectation they had from employers and NSDC. 
• The quality of education was so poor that these aspirants study just for the sake of obtaining their certificates and not for learning and implementing it. 
• The mindset was a major issue as it was a generation shift from their parents to them who were uneducated and didn't know the value of education and the importance of quality in education. 
• How good the job may be or best the salary be aspirants couldn't accept it because of their perception to get much better and simultaneously lose out on the present job in hand. 
• Scholarships are a major turning point for the scenario. Earlier only merit-based and need-based scholarships were awarded to students which were the best thing happening but it was widened to all making it clear that, since they didn't have any investment from themselves or their parents they need not bother even if they didn't get anything back. Close to 4 Lakh graduates last year including engineers went unemployed and, more than 70% of them had failed at least one exam in their four years. The scholarship initiative gave rise to 627 engineering colleges in AP and TS which were like factories manufacturing machines. In 2018 graduation results for Bcom, Bsc, BA, more than 50% of the graduates failed and this year in 2019 more than 70% of graduates failed.
• The emergence of government training institutes is the most pressing thing where aspirants out of the pressure from family and peers spend the most promising year of their until 27-28 years by repeatedly appearing for government exams. A report published in November 2018,18 of the notification rolled out for applications didn't get a date of examination till date. 

Companies Perspective -

• In order to have such a long term and scaleable activity companies were rolled in. CSR isn't new to Indian Markets but wasn't mandatory too until 2014.

• It wasn't mandated to conduct or use their funds solely in skilling and employment but it was so hot topic that time that it got everybody interested in it.  
• Companies were also tasked with the no.s or impact they had created with their funds. 

• Only after Vivo, Apollo and Samsung entered into the healthcare skilling market most the companies diversified their CSR funds and interests to tackle social problems like agriculture, school, and elementary education, microfinance etc

Government Perspective

• The govt sole purpose was to create a platform uniformly catering to all the stakeholders i.e. aspirants, training centers and trainers

• The strategy was so wrong or misplaced that it shook the entire youth segment vertically and horizontally.

• Though it isn't declared a scam but not too far away to get that title

• Lack of proper good opportunities was another concern as the aspirants only got jobs in very few industries and still, the case is the same.

• The focus on programs was shifted rapidly from quantity to placements to quality and what not.

When these 3 perspectives of stakeholders combined what has got to happen is the present situation of the country where the youth is confused and the initiatives making it even more confused whether to move forward with they want to do or go back to do what others want.

The Need of the Hour!

The route to employment from education us very fragmented.

Education providers, Education Seekers, and Companies are living parallel worlds and do not understand what is the need of the hour.

If only focused on training on basic English, Computer Skills and Aptitude with Soft Skills which is relevantly important, but another situation will arise in the near future that a shortage skill set of next level workforce will be a challenge again who will not have enough understanding to accomplish the tasks.

As quoted earlier, skilling agencies and companies should work together in providing a large product line of courses which will help the aspirant seek education of his/her own choice.


An ecosystem where the companies are providing their product courses for free or for a discount should partner with skilling agencies and delivered by present working professionals who are more capable of imparting highly relevant and useful skills from that industry.

Presently, industries across creative writing, sales, and marketing, international BPOs, analytics networking components, hospitality are facing a severe shortage of employees in entry-level segments who in turn reject candidates for not having perfectly defined skills for that role an HR from a leading consulting firm quoted.

In my interaction with aspirants who are looking for a job are not willing to join any skilling agency to get themselves skilled do not want to join because they have lost trust from the skilling initiatives.

An ideal aspirant who is unemployed and looking for a job becomes a target group of skilling agencies, and that ideal aspirant receives an average of 10-15 calls per day from the institutes to get enrolled for training and the placement.

In a board meeting where issues like capital, market share, new products, and customer engagement should be discussed are now making entry-level hiring a sharp point of discussion and then moving forward.

The ecosystem of skilling should focus on becoming a continuum between education and employment, for which both employers and skilling agencies should step into each other's world providing their employees to train the aspirants.

Apart from this, value for money, lack of interest, capacity to learn new skills, or not getting accepted to the program of choice, fixed salaries, work pressure, are still some areas which may not change overnight. But a ray of hope can be seen if these 3 stakeholders i.e. Employers, training providers and training seekers come onboard in an eco-system.