by Moiz Mannan
The Narendra Modi-led government of India has put aside several billion rupees this year for initiatives aimed at skill development of the youth for employment and entrepreneurship. The national multi-skill programme ‘Skill India’ was announced by finance minister Arun Jaitley in the union budget he presented before the parliament on Thursday.
Five new Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and five new Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) will be set up across the country. The minister also said employment exchanges will work as career centres and provide counseling to youth to inform them about job opportunities and to pick options according to their aptitude.
These are laudable initiatives and, if properly implemented, would help raise the employability levels of Indian youth.
Having said that, one must hope that this policy is extended to youths seeking skilled and semi-skilled jobs abroad as well as to low-skilled migrant workers forced by circumstances to return to India.
The finance minister has said the new programme would include skill sets such as those for welders, cutters and equipment operators. These are sought-after skill sets not just in the Gulf, but across the developed world. The Gulf boom of 1970s caused a massive exodus of Indian workers to the Gulf region. During the 1990s, globalisation speeded up the cross-border movement of people, making India one of the largest labour-providing countries in the world.
The massive number of low-skilled Indians living and working abroad underlines the government’s role in empowering and protecting these workers through provision and upgrading of skills as an effective means of protection for migrant workers.
You don’t need to send them to the IITs or the IIMs. Rather, a housemaid used to cleaning with a broom must know how to operate a vacuum cleaner. Similarly, cooks need to be trained in the use of advanced technological kitchen gadgets and drivers need to know how to operate sophisticated new vehicles. Creating training and skill development infrastructure facilities in such areas would require heavy investment.
In this regard, the Minister of Overseas Indians Affairs, Sushma Swaraj, needs to impress upon the Prime Minister, the Finance Minister as well as the Human Resources Minister to refashion and reactivate some earlier skill development initiatives for migrant workers. Their context is special. For them, the enhancement of only job skills is not enough. They need a mechanism that provides knowledge and training in areas such as basic migration laws, travel documentation, their legal rights as migrant employees and redressal procedures. Orientation programmes on foreign job search and identification of genuine employers, negotiating contracts and minimum safeguards with respect to working conditions must be strengthened and their accessibility improved.
Further, structured programmes must be added to make migrants aware of the politics, economy and culture of the host countries. Imparting language skills becomes important here. We know that in states like Kerala and Andhra the potential migrants have been acquiring Arabic language skills informally with private tutors for decades.
Surely, the MOIA can institutionalise such training in English, European and some Asian languages and the culture, traditions and customs of these lands to diversify labour exports. Such an approach will also reduce ethnic tensions, combat the segregation of migrants, and will also create conditions for the effective protection of their rights and legitimate interests.
Some two years ago, the MOIA had thought up of a few projects to help build Indian migrant workers’ capabilities to move up the value chain. The implementation was left to the India Centre for Migration (ICM), formerly known as Indian Council of Overseas Employment (ICOE) which is a ‘not for profit’ society established by MOIA.
Nothing of note came about as a result of these projects, most of which have faded into oblivion. Now, it is up to the Modi government to extend its new philosophy of skill development to this huge chunk of Indians who need it as desperately as the residents.
