‘Make in India’ will boost the Indian jobs market

The ‘Make in India’ scheme is aimed to build India a global hub of manufacturing, aimed to raise the share of manufacturing in gross domestic product (GDP) to 25% by 2022. The government has identified 25 key sectors and plans to provide relevant support and incentives to boost investments in them. Some of these sectors include construction, textiles, food processing, and skill-intensive sectors such as aviation, defense equipment manufacturing, and electronics, among others.

Besides friendly policy interventions, people or workforce would form the key element to achieve the desired objectives. Hence, jobs across the levels would be strengthened with addition of multiple set of jobs under this umbrella. While the niche and high-technology oriented profiles would be a value addition to the job roles, management and soft skills roles would go hand in hand as demand from hiring managers. Mass hiring in front line jobs and vocational trades would open a floodgate of opportunity for job seekers.

Important things that need increased focus to keep the momentum rising in the jobs market would be improvement in skill levels of existing employees, properly train the workforce entering the jobs market and innovation in human resource activities like hiring, induction of new employees, retention of existing employees, and effective employee engagement initiatives.

‘Make in India’ is a promising initiative and is expecting the employment scenario to get a boost in the years to come. While this initiative intends to make India a top destination for foreign direct investment, it primarily focuses on job creation and skill enhancement in targeted 25 sectors, with an estimate of 100 million new jobs by 2022.
There is already a positive response to the initiative in the last year. Next year, we estimate another 7-8 lakh temporary jobs to be created. It would also add 8-13 % to the current job pool as investment into manufacturing and related sectors. Refocusing on India's traditional occupations would also add to this and should potentially create 10 million jobs a year.

Key drivers of job generation
Key drivers are foreign direct investment in identified 25 sectors of the economy, which should lead to additional workforce demand. This includes sectors like automobile and its components, chemicals, defense manufacturing, food processing, pharmaceuticals, ports and shipping, textile and garments, tourism, hospitality and wellness. These sectors being the key industry sectors of India, these are in itself the key drivers for job generation.

Levels at which jobs would be created
There will be a huge requirement for entry level jobs for both semi-skilled and skilled workforce. We estimate a rise in the number of young workforce in the age group of 15 to 29 from the current 153 million to 158 million by 2025. There will also be an increase in niche high-technology opportunities demanding specialist skills.

As this initiative touches manufacturing and engineering and related sectors, key skill would be required in the space of design and engineering, project planning, execution, erection, commissioning, operations and maintenance, transmission and distribution, trading and regulatory, renewable energy, and manufacturing.

Most certainly, we see hiring trends and initiatives to change, as there is a huge skill requirement and an obvious skill gap. In the immediate term, investing corporates should upgrade the skilling infrastructure, plan appropriate hiring and quality trainings. Initiatives like structured workforce readiness programs and On the job trainings may help in catering to existing supply and demand gap. We also see a rise in campus and contractual hiring to support the mass hiring needs.

Discovery of gravitational waves, with Indian participation

The world sees such big-bang discoveries in about 30 years, says a UK-based academic who is a part of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) that discovered gravitational waves in September 2015. Given its importance, the find will spawn new study, research and career options in astrophysics, astronomy, theoretical physics and high-precision experiments with the presence of a gravitational wave observatory in the country. Last month, the Union cabinet approved a project to set up the facility in association with the US-based LIGO Laboratory run by Caltech and MIT. 

“Our students will have access to this observational facility (LIGO-India) on a regular basis through, for example, summer projects, research and internships,” says Bala R Iyer, chairperson, IndIGO consortium, India’s initiative in gravitational-wave observations and visiting professor, International Centre for Theoretical Sciences-Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (ICTS-TIFR). 

The LIGO-India project will mean new openings for engineers from fields such as optical, mechanical and vacuum engineering and scientists specialising in areas including high-precision experiments, and optics, “at this point,” adds Iyer. “At the moment, we don’t have expertise in areas like high-precision experiments in India. So, LIGO-India could build capabilities in this field.”  

The world outside of academic portals, too, may see useful spin-offs from the waves captured by US-based twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors at two locations in the US -- Livingston, Louisiana and Hanford, Washington -- on September 14, 2015. “For society at large, engineering challenges like LIGO spur on the development of new technology,” says Ed Daw, reader, department of physics and astronomy, University of Sheffield. “We are developing control systems with new and interesting properties that have many applications, from control of electric motors to new protocols for mobile phone communications. These control systems were developed to remove noise from LIGO data,” he says. “All this should be particularly exciting to students thinking about going into physics or engineering, or particularly those having interests at the boundary between these two subjects.” 

Ripple Effect
-Two black holes collided into -- and merged with -- each other about 1.3 billion years away from earth
-The resulting energy sent ripples, termed gravitational waves, into the universe
-On September 14, 2015, at 5.51am Eastern Daylight Time, the waves passed through the blue planet where scientists had installed a twin observatory to ‘catch’ them 
-Einstein had predicted them 100 years ago  
-These are called gravitational waves as they are associated with a gravitational field in general relativity
-Founded in 1997, LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC), which discovered the waves, has more than 1,000 scientists from 15 countries, including India.

Education Opens Door