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The country proudly celebrates the success of Indian origin champions abroad from sports to the tech industry. But critics say it only highlights a wider brain-drain problem.
Why India lags behind in imparting skills to its workforce
A vast number of young people in India lack the key skills needed to be employable, according to recent surveys. Upskilling the workforce could boost India s economy by hundreds of billions of dollars.
Job seekers line up outside the venue of a job fair in Chinchwad in February 2019
India has one of the largest workforces in the world: With nearly 500 million people of working age, the domestic labor market is second only to China s and far bigger than those of the United States and the EU.
India also has a much younger population, with an average age of 26.8 years. Tens of millions of students graduate from colleges across the country every year, entering the workforce.
By Dr Arjun Kumar, Ritika Gupta
Delivering a Special Lecture organized by Centre for Work and Welfare (CWW) at the Impact and Policy Research Institute (IMPRI) on Labour, Employment and Pandemic: Policy Suggestions and Way Forward for Budget 2021, Prof Santosh Mehrotra, retired professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), observed that the fiscal stimulus provided by the Government of India (GoI) post-lockdown was severely inadequate. It was only a fraction of what was provided post the 2008 global financial meltdown where the effects on the economy were comparatively mediocre, he maintains.
Prof Mehrotra stated that while going into the ill-planned lockdown, India already had about 280 million unemployed people. He added that the growth rate of the country was falling quarter by quarter since 2016 and had hit a dismal low of 4.1% in early 2020. The lockdown imposed in March, which is touted as the most stringent in the world by various reports, skyrocketed India’s unemployme