Thoughts on the Future of Work in India and how 21st Century Skills and holistic adult education addresses some of the current and future needs and issues.

1. Higher learning, employability, and entrepreneurship externalities in India
Political
Economical
Social
Technology
Law &
Regulation
International
Environmental
Demographic
• Rightwing nationalism on the rise. BJP calls for a Self-Reliant India. #MakeInIndia highly popularized.
• Farm-loan waivers increasing state debt burdens. State governments increasingly adopting income-support schemes which subsidise education. Growing bias to keep
education and skill development in public ownership. Governments’ budget rightly focusing on upstream ( K12 etc) this gives way for private actors to shoulder downstream
areas (higher and life-long learning)
• Economic slump for the foreseeable future -
• Low spending power is suddenly restricted too.
• Lowered discretionary spending - ROI/Utility focused buying behaviour in the near term.
• All businesses are now in the Global Market
• Second/ third waves shocking : Brazil / Beijing etc
• Tensions between USA, China and India
• 4IR : While India is strong in 4G connectivity and digital payments, robotics and automation hasn’t taken over the industry yet.
• i.e, white collar jobs are remote compatible while blue-grey collar jobs remain physical.
• Post COVID19: Where we work and the way we work are substantially different today and will remain so for at least a year.
• Deep traditional values in India are resorting and patriotism at an all time high with huge reverse-migration.
• Global push towards Sustainability - accelerated by COVID19
• Governments striving for Sustainable Industry 4.0 Production as environmental awareness is rising.
• Circular Business models yet to enter india.
• 50% Increase in the number of seats by in centrally funded institutions of higher learning (especially engineering, law, and management).
• Post-COVID19: 200 universities (institutes of eminence given permission to offer purely online degrees.
• 28 qualitative parameters to adhere to for fully online higher learning
• India faced a Brain-drain issue which is now being reversed. Reverse migration from overseas to India — Trump’s policies.
• Urban to Rural resettlement is taking place.
Future of Work in India

2. India: Opportunity to act with foresight and not only hindsight.
Factuality Trends Impact Opportunities
Education
Life-Long learning
Workforce & employment
Profitably accelerating
SDG Achievement at scale.
Entrepreneurship
• While access to capital and safety cushions are
increasing, entrepreneurial awareness is low.
• Prevalent ambiguity upon entrepreneurship - everyone
wants to build tech unicorns.
• Micro-entrepreneurship / Low-tech business models are
under appreciated.
• Indian Universities struggling to be in the top 500.
• 90% of graduates unemployable or are usually
underemployed.
• Still not mainstream.
• Social shaming prevalent towards continuous adult
learning.
• Skill-redundancy is rapid
• Low women workforce participation.
• Soft skills and low
• Low context-adaptability amongst Indian workforce.
• As career paths are altered by large-scale labour
market disruptions, there is an increasing need
for lifelong learning - at all ages, both inside and
outside of schools.
• Adult training is vital for ensuring that those
already in the workforce, and their employers, are
able to navigate the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
• Adaptive re-skilling, or helping employees gain
new skills, will be a key way to alleviate
unemployment, unequal access to resources,
and inactivity.
• A dynamic training environment has the potential
to provide deeply fulfilling careers to workers and
to encourage social cohesion, as noted in the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization’s 3rd Global Report on
Adult Learning and Education.
• In nearly every industry, technological and socio-
economic changes are limiting the adequacy of
employee skill sets. To best facilitate this,
education systems need mechanisms to motivate
individual engagement with active learning.
• Future readiness and productivity will depend on
an ability to reform workplaces; by 2022, more
than half of all employees in the world will require
re- and upskilling, according to the World
Economic Forum’s 2018 The Future of
Jobs report.
Unprecedented opportunity to handhold Youth/learners in upskilling,
career switching, self-employment, and entrepreneurship.
Post COVID19 its near impossible to achieve the $5 trillion Indian
GDP by 2025 however this can be accelerated by bridging the
widespread skill-gap.
The Prime Minister’s vision to transform India into a developed
country by 2040 and make it the “Skills capital of the world”
require huge public-private impetus towards life-long learning.
Only a knowledge economy can accelerate development at the
triple bottom line.
Out of 12 million Indian youth entering the workforce each year, a
staggering 65-75% are not job ready or unemployable, with poor
education and negligible work skills.
India is estimated to have half a billion english speaking workforce by
end of 2020. Post COVID19 more women are going to participate in
the workforce.
India is projected to have a surplus of 47 million, unemployable
workforce while the world is expected to face a shortage of 56.5
million skilled workers by the same year.
Reports indicate lack of training infrastructure and substandard
training by ministries -
India has a requirement of 20,000 skills trainers of various kinds
Augmented Virtual Learning

3. STEM Skills
Traditional Skill Development and Higher
Education in Emerging Economies Future of Skills
In the 21st century, we need deep generalists as much as technology specialists.
Digital Fluency
21st Century Skills
Project Management
Applied
S.T.E.A.M
Values, Attitude, and Mindset
Language