Entrepreneurial Skill Needs an Inclusive Pathway
By S Vaidhyasubramaniam
Published: 22nd November 2014 10:00 PM
Last Updated: 22nd November 2014 01:56 PM
Married couples across the country almost started believing that kissing and hugging in the streets is the only way to express affection and confining it within their homes is being unfair to the spouse. The alarming rate at which media attention shifted to the hissing ‘Kiss of Love,’ it took a fizzing ‘Cabinet 2.0’ to divert media attention temporarily and also ensure that Swachh Bharat was not misunderstood as Smooch Bharat. The avoidable but continuing media discourse on the travails of marginal deviants has fortunately not blinded us from the birth of the new baby in the Cabinet expansion—Ministry of Skill and Entrepreneurship. Detached from Youth Affairs and Sports, this independent creation is essential for strengthening India’s economic backbone—its entrepreneurial skilled workforce.
Education has been identified as a major priority area in the post-2015 development agenda discussions involving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), Education for All (EFA) and other multi-lateral global initiatives. According to the UNESCO Institute of Statistics, the primary school enrolment in South Asia has increased from the levels of 75 per cent in 2000 to 90 per cent in 2011. India’s response has been reasonable good in primary education with dropout rates not being very high as a percentage when compared to the numbers (because of the population size) of its South Asian neighbours Pakistan or Bangladesh. However, considering the size of the biggest South Asian nation, India, the number of non-schoolgoing children is still alarmingly high. Various socio-cultural barriers along with other policy bottlenecks are reasons for this massive exclusion which are clearly visible in the huge number of non-participant children or those at the risk of dropping out from school. The concerning trend is in the increasing dropout in the post-lower secondary school education and the risk of this number growing in the future. On one hand, retention is a good strategy to arrest this trend and on the other hand, developing sustainable models of engagement for the dropouts/potential dropouts is necessary to avoid a huge social crisis.
The focus of education must shift from enrolment to empowerment. An increased gross enrolment ratio is critical for progress, but equally critical is an alternate livelihood mechanism for school dropouts. They need to be part of the formal national skill development framework through an institutionalised mechanism designed for them. The vision of the Union Government in certain national tasks like Make in India, Swachh Bharat, Jan Dhan, Smart Cities, etc. has a common skilled workforce requirement that necessitates massive skill development programmes for school dropouts leading to job creation or self-employment opportunities. School dropouts cannot be left behind as academic outcastes.
Prof. R Vaidyanathan, in his book titled India UnInc. explores the Indian economic architecture through the lens of its proprietors and partners (P&P)—according to him, the real national economic players and not highly educated. The P&P constitute the entrepreneurial non-corporate sector which provides 90 per cent of the country’s employment and is 45 per cent of India’s economy, which is three times the corporate share of economy. It is unfortunate that this economic spine of our country is also the most neglected one. The formal banking system has failed to serve the small and medium enterprises with adequate financial support covering less than 10 per cent of the people involved in the non-corporate sector, forcing many to borrow at non-competitive costs of capital. Non-corporates cannot be left behind as financial outcastes.
vaidhya@sastra.edu
http://www.newindianexpress.com/magazine/voices/2014/11/22/Entrepreneurial-Skill-Needs-an-Inclusive-Pathway/article2534589.ece