IT remains India’s best bet for job creation

Jobs. It’s the one topic that everyone is interested in. From thousands of students graduating every year to professionals searching for the next career break, every one is interested in knowing what the outlook is across different sectors.

Firstpost spoke to Derryl E Green, executive vice president, and Sanjay Pandit, managing director of Man Power Group, a human resources specialist, to find out what sectors will drive job growth in India in the future.

Thee information technology and business process outsourcing (BPO) industries will dominate job creation. Reuters

Here are edited excerpts:

What is your take on the jobs scenario in India, where you have unemployed people on one hand and companies starved of skilled workers on the other?

Sanjay Pandit and Derryl Green: India is a country with enormous opportunities. It has the best students, colleges and a huge number of aspirants for university education. But there are serious issues concerning the scales of payment and attrition rates. There is also a mismatch between university education and knowing what corporate life is all about.

The problem is more acute in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, where students pass out from not so well-known colleges. The challenge is training them and providing them with jobs.

Which sectors in the coming decade do you think will provide maximum job creation?

Sanjay Pandit: The services sector will continue to lead in employment as it has done so far, although we are currently witnessing a slowdown in employment the sector.

But the manufacturing sector needs to start contributing to large-scale employment generation, which can come from the factory model. Overall, however, the information technology and business process outsourcing (BPO) industries will dominate job creation.

The Indian job market is dominated by the unorganised sector. What impact does that have?

Sanjay Pandit: When we talk of the unorganised sector, we need to divide it further into two parts: those who are relatively more skilled, like those who hold diplomas from Industrial Training Institutes, and those who are not as skilled, such as plumbers and carpenters, who advance as they gain experience.

This second group cannot bargain for better wages or working conditions and need to be helped. There is no policy initiative, no government role in making their life better. Labour reforms are essential in this regard, especially in manufacturing. The only way forward for India is tremendous growth in organised manufacturing.

Should the government get involved with training them?

Derryl Green: No, that is not the government’s job. The government’s job is to provide a conducive environment so that huge investments can happen and people can get jobs in manufacturing sectors. What we need is more factories. Look at China. A factory in China that produces Nike shoes, for instance, has all the equipment and the people needed to make those shoes.

But creating such a manufacturing sector requires huge investments. That is not happening in India.