Young India lacks soft skills: Survey

White Paper

India’s demographic dividend – its young population – is in danger of becoming a liability. By a conservative estimate, more than one-third of the millions that graduate each year are unemployable.

A survey of 303 employers across the country by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) in 2010 found a majority of graduates lacked adequate “soft skills” to be employed in the industry.

Only about one-third employers were satisfied with the communication ability of their employees and about 26 per cent with their employees’ writing ability. If this trend continues, the prospects for the 1.4 billion youth estimated to enter the work force by 2020, and consequently for the economy, look anything but promising.

An April 6 report in the Wall Street Journal highlighted this growing mismatch between the labour force and the skill set available.

“India graduates millions but too few are fit to hire,” the report says. “Engineering colleges in India now have seats for 1.5 million students, nearly four times the 39,000 available in 2000. But 75 per cent of technical graduates and more than 85 per cent of general students are unemployable”.

Narendra Jadhav, Planning Commission member in-charge of education and former vice-chancellor of Pune University, agrees. “Survey after survey has shown that 33 per cent of our graduates are unemployable,” he said. “The quality of teaching on our campuses is outdated. They do not follow the latest market demands. Added to that is the student’s level of learning, but most crucial is the lack of communication skills,” he added.

The Ficci survey found that only 26 per cent employers are satisfied with their employees’ ability to communicate in English, “the most widely used professionally communicated language”.

According to the survey of decision-makers in the country, which included top CEOs, MDs and human resource directors, the importance of “soft skills” in today’s employment landscape cannot be overemphasised. Though of late, the human resource development ministry appears to have woken up to the fact that ‘skill development’ is an area that needs urgent attention in our education system. But experts say the focus of the programme is still skewed – it still focuses only on vocational education, missing out ‘soft skills’ training.

Source:India Today Article