“RUNWAY TO SKILLED INDIA” to be released by Dr. Vinay Sahasrabuddhe MP, President, Indian Council For Cultural Relations (ICCR- MEA, GoI,) in the presence of Sri Alphons Kannanthanam MP, Former Union Minister of State for Culture & Tourism at 6.00 PM on 19th February, 2021 at Bikaner House, New Delhi.
Dr. Darlie O. Koshy’s new book “RUNWAY TO SKILLED INDIA” is a sequel to his much acclaimed earlier work “Indian Design Edge”. In the new book he makes a strong advocacy to combine India’s inherent creativity with acquired skills to move from ‘supply driven’ skilling to ‘demand driven’ and then ‘innovation driven’ skill development to foster value creation. Towards this he evangelizes a ‘RUN’ (Re-skilling, Up-skilling, New-skilling) strategy especially for the 356 million youth and the 450 million work-labour force across sectors with special focus on the largest employment generating sectors which include Textile-Apparel-Fashion-Lifestyle-Retail (TAFLR) especially adopting a ‘T’ shaped skilling approach. The new book is intended to facilitate a focused R.U.N. strategy to confront and conquer the disruptive changes in employment patterns and requirements so as to redirect the skill development efforts by 2022 when India turns 75 post-independence and to go beyond in this decade to achieve the status of ‘Skill Capital for the World’.
The takeaways in this book are rooted in the spirit of Atmarnirbhar Bharat which Dr. Koshy believes is an overarching concept of self-esteem and self-reliance for every Indian. For this, rediscovering and repurposing India’s innate creativity and traditional skills embedded in crafts, arts and design is critical and the ‘traditional and newly emerging clusters’ offer the best opportunity with e-commerce opening up new markets. The ODOP scheme in UP introduced in 2018 exemplifies such an approach. Dr. Koshy also argues for redirecting and restructuring post-covid skill development by assessing ‘skill density’ of each course to move to a ‘Hybrid’ learner-centric pedagogy and to integrate with Digital Learning Platforms as World Economic Forum has also recently advised. The book examines the role of traditional crafts and other natural manufacturing clusters and suggests proactive design, technology and business interventions so that the job losses suffered during covid times can be mitigated while providing new avenues for creating jobs and providing economic sustenance and livelihoods.
Dr. Koshy’s new book is being launched by the President of Indian Council For Cultural Relations (ICCR) Dr. Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, MP in the presence of Sri Alphons Kannanthanam, MP, the Former Union Minister of State for Culture & Tourism at 6.00 PM on 19th February 2021, at Bikaner House, New Delhi.
The book had a Pre-launch Webinar on 18th December, 2020 with an array of experts from skill space as well as from Textile-Apparel and other allied Industries who had explored the ‘Future of Jobs & Skills’. Later on 15th January, 2021 a Virtual Round Table was held to discuss the Book’s contents and takeaways by Thought Leaders. The book has incorporated for the first time an interactive model with a QR Code for the reader to listen to the entire proceedings of Virtual Round Table which had leading luminaries like Sri Ajit Seth, Former Cabinet Secretary, GoI and Sri Mohandas Pai, Chairman, Manipal Global Education, Dr. Subroto Bagchi, Chairman, Odisha Skill Development Authority (OSDA), Sri V. Srinivas, IAS Addl. Secretary, Dept. of Administrative Reforms, Sri Rahul Mehta, Chief Mentor, CMAI, Dr. Sabeena Mathayas, Education Specialist, National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) among others who have dealt with multi-faceted dimensions of the book thus bringing a rich mosaic of ideas and possibilities to realise the dream of ‘Skilled India’.
The name of the Book “RUNWAY TO SKILLED INDIA” suggests that there are many approaches possible for making ‘India skilled’ and to eventually become a ‘skill capital for the world’. The policies from 2009 onwards are beginning to make felt impact as the % age of skilled people have increased from 2% to about 5% over this period. However, there is a long way to go before substantial number of trained candidates with higher productivity levels and global benchmarks are attained.
The Central Govt. had announced a training target of at least 50 Crore youth and women in 2009 and in 2015, the Govt. came out with National Skill Mission and had also set up the Ministry for Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE). With all the efforts put in, various agencies have so far trained about 7-8 Crore youth. Post the covid-pandemic during 2020, there is a pressing need to take a series of bold steps with focus on ‘Go Vocal about Local’ to generate more jobs for the youth of our country especially in rural India thus, reiterating the message of the Hon. Prime Minister.
