"Education, Research, and Employment Landscape in India: Navigating Challenges and Embracing Opportunities"
Hello everyone, Today we will peep on the Employment Landscape of India from 2019 to 2024. We are also going to talk about what is the quality of Education and Research in India.
Without any delay let's start.
Before we talk about the problem, let's glance at the composition of India's employment force. There has been a big shift from the unorganized sector to the organized sector in the past 15 years. So most of the people who are working are in the organized sector(about 76%). Here is a graph from the Ministry of Labour and Employment on the composition of the workforce.
The male workers constituted 68.4% of the total workers and the female workers
constituted 31.6%.
Though marginally,, Health is the sector where female workers are greater than
male workers. All other sectors are male-dominated.
Each of the Education and Financial Services sectors has more than 40% female
workers. The IT/BPO sector also has a significant number of female workers with 38.7%.
The wide gap between male and female workers was in the construction and transport sectors.
The next is about the rate of Unemployment. Here is a table portraying the unemployment rates from 2019 to 2023(October) from Forbes.
1. Unemployability: At the outset, it may seem that only obscure technical skills, understanding of high-complexity engineering models, or functional knowledge of specific industries would be rare. However, a quick look at employer surveys reveals that soft skills are rare too. The ability to perform in a team, emotional intelligence, and critical evaluation are some of the most important skills that employers are unable to find in their hires.
So even if there are jobs produced there is no one to fill that post because they lack that particular skill that the job demands. To know more about this phenomenon I would suggest you read this beautiful blog article by Priyanka Gupta.
2. Colleges in India: Most Indian colleges especially Engineering Colleges do not provide the skills that are needed for today and the future. They are stuck with an old curriculum that just hands the degree out but does not upskill the youth. The youth are also more focused on getting a college degree rather than upskilling themselves. Moreover, there is a huge lack of vocational courses which are mostly seen as a course that are taken by the so-called "unemployed".
3. Brain Drain: OK, but not all colleges are like that. We do produce a skilled workforce. But the problem is these workforces are going abroad and contributing to their economy. However, I would like to mention that this is my opinion that this is a cause of unemployment. So I leave this topic to you. Do comment on it and I would love to hear your opinion.
GOVERNMENT'S Efforts:
The government of India has taken various steps to generate employment in the country. The Government of India has announced the Aatmanirbhar Bharat package to provide stimulus to businesses and to mitigate the adverse impact of Covid 19. Under this package, the Government is providing fiscal stimulus of more than Rs. Twenty-seven lakh crore. This package comprises various long-term schemes/programs/ policies for making the country self-reliant and creating employment opportunities.
https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1809229
Above is the PIB release of what the Government is doing.
To bridge the gap of unemployability the Government has come up with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
Focus on Foundational Literacy and Numeracy: The policy accords the highest priority to achieving Foundational Literacy and Numeracy by all students by Grade 3. The policy states, "The highest priority of the education system will be to achieve universal foundational literacy and numeracy in primary school by 2025. The rest of this Policy will become relevant for our students only if this most basic learning requirement (i.e., reading, writing, and arithmetic at the foundational level) is first achieved. To this end, a National Mission on Foundational Literacy and Numeracy will be set up by the Ministry of Education on priority. Accordingly, all State/UT governments will immediately prepare an implementation plan for attaining universal foundational literacy and numeracy in all primary schools, identifying stage-wise targets and goals to be achieved by 2025, and closely tracking and monitoring the progress of the same". Subsequently, the NIPUN Bharat Mission (National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy) was launched on 5 July 2021 to achieve this goal.
- The "10 + 2" structure will be replaced with the "5+3+3+4" model. This will be implemented as follows:
- Foundational Stage: This is further subdivided into two parts: 3 years of preschool or Anganwadi, followed by classes 1 and 2 in primary school. This will cover children of ages 3–8 years. The focus of the studies will be on activity-based learning.
- Preparatory Stage: Classes 3 to 5, which will cover the ages of 8–10 years. It will gradually introduce subjects like speaking, reading, writing, physical education, languages, art, science, and mathematics.
- Middle Stage: Classes 6 to 8, covering children between ages 11 and 13. It will introduce students to the more abstract concepts in subjects of mathematics, sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities.
- Secondary Stage: Classes 9 to 12, covering the ages of 14–18 years. It is again subdivided into two parts: classes 9 and 10 cover the first phase while classes 11 and 12 cover the second phase. These 4 years of study are intended to inculcate multidisciplinary study, coupled with depth and critical thinking. Multiple options of subjects will be provided.
- Instead of exams being held every academic year, school students will only attend three exams, in classes 2, 5, and 8.
- Board exams will continue to be held for classes 10 and 12 but will be re-designed. Standards for this will be established by an assessment body, PARAKH (Performance Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development) To make them easier, these exams would be conducted twice a year, with students being offered up to two attempts. The exam itself would have two parts, namely the objective and the descriptive.
- This policy aims at reducing the curriculum load of students and allowing them to be more "inter-disciplinary" and "multi-lingual". One example given was "If a student wants to pursue fashion studies with physics, or if one wants to learn bakery with chemistry, or economics with biology they'll be allowed to do so". Report cards will be "holistic", offering information about the student's skills.
- Coding will be introduced from class 6 and experiential learning will be adopted
- The Midday Meal Scheme will be extended to include breakfasts. More focus will be given to students' health, particularly mental health, through the deployment of counselors and social workers.
Higher education
- It proposes a 4-year multi-disciplinary bachelor's degree in an undergraduate program with multiple exit options. These will include professional and vocational areas and will be implemented as follows:
- A certificate after completing 1 year of study
- A diploma after completing 2 years of study
- A Bachelor's degree after completion of a 3-year program
- A 4-year multidisciplinary bachelor's degree (the preferred option)
- MPhil (Masters of Philosophy) courses are to be discontinued to align degree education with how it is in Western models.
- A Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) will be set up to regulate higher education. The council's goal will be to increase the gross enrollment ratio.
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