Urgent Need to Incorporate Skill Development Strategies in Existing Academic FrameworkÂ
Dr. Kiritkumar Bhatt
In the current most modern industrial era, skill development is an essential requirement for self-employment and even to be an entrepreneur. It is found that there is a huge mass of unemployed youth across Asian countries, but it is difficult to get the right type of person who is doing the job of his discipline. Hence, it is recorded that there is an excess in the workforce, yet there is an insufficiency. Because of a lack of the right skilled manpower, some positions remain vacant for longer. If the government and private institutions join hands and introduce some skill development programs as a part of the curriculum right from the school level, it will be a great weapon to withstand the coming global challenges. In the process to achieve 21st-century economic growth, a high rate of per capita contribution is an obvious expectation. Every child must be imparted vocational education for their all-round development.
It is projected that India is supposed to be the biggest contributor to provide the global workforce pool because of its large population growth with the average age of 30 – 32 years considered to be the youngest in the world. Looking at this scenario India has much more responsibility towards the global society to up bring its workforce with guaranteed and well-equipped skills for faster, sustainable, and inclusive growth and in the creation of employment opportunities for the growing youth. India must produce a technically trained workforce to meet its growing economy at the domestic level and train people to fill the workforce gap for the world’s advanced economies.
Hence, if skills are not upgraded to the upcoming and the existing workforce, the national economic growth rate will be hampered very dangerously.
The national-level scenario and looking at such projections and the requirement to increase the capacity and capability of skill development, the central government has already taken afresh initiatives such as skilled India, Innovative India, Digital India, ATAL Tinkering Labs, make in India, and many such down the line. Skill development through education can give extraordinary speed to the process of achieving various sustainable development goals defined by the United Nations within the timeframe.
For any country, its education system defines the growth and the strength of the nation, as it develops its citizens to withstand future challenges. The education system must produce a skilled workforce in this technologically advanced world to keep the nation secure, advanced, progressing, growing industries, strengthening defense, and making it only one or the number one nation among the other competitive nations. Education is a very power full tool to meet the sustainable development goals defined by the United Nations. Hence, it is the core demand of the present time to improve and/or correct our academic ecosystem right from schooling and witness to lay a strong foundation for the capacity building of our beloved nation and to become a major contributor in the process of achieving the sustainable development to spread the peace across the globe.