‘WE SPEND ₹5,000 CRORE ON SKILLING EVERY YEAR’

THE ONGOING digital transformation across the world presents India with a big economic opportunity, which it can take advantage of only if it has a skilled workforce. The Government of India is working on a plan to not just skill the workforce at the district level, but to also upskill, reskill and multiskill it. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology and Skill Development & Entrepreneurship says the government is spending ₹4,000-5,000 crore every year on skilling and has trained 30 million citizens over the past five years. Excerpts from an interview:

While India is known for its engineering talent, the Indian workforce was believed to be amongst the least skilled in 2019. The situation has improved but there is a long way to go. What is the government doing about this?

I completely agree with one part of the premise of your question, which is that in the post-Covid-19 world, and indeed during Covid-19, the world has discovered that the skills that are required are going to be a lot more fluid and dynamic. There was a certain stasis to the skilling ecosystem—not just in India but around the world—which was, ‘we will have some job roles, we will skill people