The glide path to hearing “You Are Hired!”

It is a success story whose prelude has just been written. For 19-year-old Asha from UP’s Gorakhpur, and an ITI graduate in Electrician Trade, the rewards of hard work are set to pay off. And so are the sacrifices of her father, Jai Ram, who makes a modest living by polishing shoes, but who always accorded top priority to his children’s education. 

After passing out of ITI, a one-year apprenticeship equipped Asha with on-the-ground training and helped her acquire skills that not only made her employable but allowed her to support her family with a stipend. Regrettably with 6 crore unemployed youth in India in the age group of 15-24 years, success stories like that of Asha are more an exception than the rule. In fact, in the last two years youth employability has declined in India as the India Skills Report 2021 testifies. With the onset of the pandemic and primarily due to loss of skilling, employability of India’s youth declined from 47.38% in 2019 to 45.9% in 2021. 

Even a cursory look at the global map on apprenticeship indicates its potential in addressing the issue of employability in India. While there are 0.5 million apprentices in the UK, it is 3 million, 10 million and 20 million in Germany, Japan and China respectively. Contrast this with India’s 0.26 million, in a country where 10 million people enter the workforce every year. 

On its part the government has been taking significant steps towards skills-based education and employment infrastructure that embraces credentials , certification, fitness-for-job and employment as outcomes. However, the use of the Apprenticeship Act, 1961 can be a game-changer by rapidly developing a skilled workforce for the industry by combining studies with on-the-job training with remuneration. It is applicable not only in vocational and engineering courses but also short term skill-based courses with minimum qualification of 8th grade for the applicant, thereby expanding its scope.

For employers and establishments, a key advantage of apprenticeship is that by law, it is an extension of a person’s educational development and not considered as employment. They get to access the youth fresh out of institutions, willing to learn and also benefit from stipends. It is financially advantageous over contractual labour and the stipend expense can be booked under CSR.

The Apprenticeship Act went through a significant change with an amendment in 2014, and was followed by the National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (NAPS) in 2016. Under NAPS, stipend reimbursement for apprentices was added to further incentivise the value proposition for corporations. What’s more, some states like Uttar Pradesh, have combined NAPS with Chief Ministers Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (CMAPS) to allow corporations to claim expenses of up to ₹2,500 per month per apprentice. 

Basic Training Providers (BTP) such as NSDC Skilling Centres and PMKVY Kendras are empowered to help aggregate demand in clusters, pool resources, mobilise potential apprentices, deliver basic training, facilitate the paperwork and educate stakeholders on the need for apprenticeships. Governance of Apprenticeship is a shared responsibility between the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) and the Ministry of Education. Both share a thematic direction of providing on-the-job training to students of vocational and technical education. The NAPS amendments have also created an IT platform as an interface between stakeholders and apprentices for compliance and monitoring purposes, making it even easier for the corporations to participate in the scheme.

The key to successful outcomes in skilling would involve in success in matching demand and supply of skilled labour, re-skilling to keep up with dynamically changing skill requirements and directing skilled labour to the right jobs. As the Indian economy scales up fulfilling its aspiration of being part of global supply chains, creating a vibrant apprenticeship culture will hold the key. For the essential ingredient of scalable supply chain of talent there would need to be a three-way linkage among student, academia and the industry departing from the current two-way university-student and employer-apprentice kind of linkages. 

With the changing realities of work, public skilling programmes must be revamped so people can make use of them to pivot. The focus has to be on apprenticeship schemes that can link education to employment, which will facilitate the re-entry of young workers. Looking ahead, it is expected that in the forthcoming Union Budget 2022, there would be a raft of proposals aimed at incentivising private players for giving a leg-up in skilling. That would create a glide path for what every youth wants to hear: “You are hired”.