Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Vision for Training and Development in India

Vision for Training and Development in India

Y N Kaushal

Potential for Training

        India’s Population is above 125 crore.
        If we restrict ourselves to working people, the number is about 50 crore. (Govt. of India figures)
        In organized sector, in well performing and forward looking companies and organizations, every person is now getting training of one week every year. This includes Central Government. (One week is interpreted differently from 5 days to 7 days.)   
        In medium and small companies, NGOs and state government the intensity of training is poor.
        In unorganized sector, it is non-existent.
        Unorganized sector is large. 6% working people are employed, 94% are self-employed, semi-employed or unemployed. This composition is not likely to change much over coming decade.


Our Vision

        We believe that we need to achieve seven days’ training for every person every year. This includes unorganized sector and farm sector as well.
        This means 50x7 crore participant days of training every year.
        If each training group has 25 participants, this means 14 crore training days.
        One trainer can normally provide 140 days training in a year.
        Hence we need 10 lakh direct trainers in India who can provide classroom training.
        We also need to make master craftsmen as on-the-job trainers and coaches. My guess is that this number would be 20 lakh persons.
        The task in front of the sector skill council is to develop training skills amongst these 30 lakh trainers and coaches over say next 10 years and assess them and certify.

Challenges in achieving T&D Vision and suggested directions


  1. Availability of Trainers: Good quality trainers are in short supply. While everyone who can make a presentation, believes that he/she is a good trainer, this is indicative of poor understanding of the role of a trainer.  
  2. Result Oriented Training (Quality): Quality of Training needs large improvement. Large part of training is seen as imparting knowledge. Focus of training has to be competency improvement and consequently performance improvement. More trainers have to be trained to use experiential learning methods. 
  3. Making Training affordable: High quality training is costly as it is in short supply. Low cost training suffers from poor quality. To popularize training, we need to make high quality training available at affordable cost.
  4. Legislative measures: Training is antidote to obsolescence. Regular and relevant training keeps a person employable and creator of economic value. Hence, we need to have an Act of Parliament making regular training mandatory for every employed person as Provident Fund is mandatory for every employee.
  5. Fiscal Measures: To encourage expenditure on training, every employer should be allowed to deduct 1.5 times of the expenditure on training. Every self-employed person should likewise be allowed to deduct 2 times the expenditure on training for self and associates.  
  6. Content development: There is need for development of model content for training programmes. Course packs, exercises and videos need to be developed in various Indian Languages.  
  7. Creating Training and Personal Development Culture in society. Creating an eco-system in the country that all components of T&D grow well. 
Revised version published on 6 September 2016.

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