Shaheen Khan is an Indian woman entrepreneur and educationalist who has made an outstanding contribution to woman empowerment and education. She is the Founder and CEO of the Council of Education and Development Programmes (CEDP). In addition to 16 years of professional experience in the Education Industry, Shaheen has hands-on experience in learning and development. She is a certified GTD Trainer, Coaching Master, Holistic Practitioner, and a certified Transformational Coach from NLP Training and Coaching Institute.
Travelling across India, meeting the youth, one fact comes across starkly- India’s youth want to succeed and are ready to work hard for it. This youth predominately seeks their skill-sets from the education curriculum designed by the Universities. The economy and ways to do business are changing so fast that by the time they learn and absorb the knowledge and try to get employment to apply the same, the business requirement changes, denying them from being employable. India faces an acute crisis of talent and determination but without the skills to harness that talent into productive income-generating opportunities.
Now, post-Covid, the world has further changed- and in this virtual- offline hybrid of working, skills that are going to be needed for the next decade are evolving and changing. Why is skill becoming such an important and reskilling more so?
It is very simple- with industries having to continuously change the way they work due to changes in technology, or customer demands, the workforce they need is also continually evolving. Further, there are new sectors and businesses now coming into being with the changing scenario. Industries that require a workforce with the capability and training to take on the jobs. There are many sectors like service, logistics, health, auto witnessing the growing demand for skilled youth. Youth can be involved in converting the challenges into opportunities and become the strong pillars of ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’.
The MSMEs (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises) sector, which contributes to around 37.54 per cent of India’s GDP and offers employment to 120 million people of the country, is growing rapidly, needs a trained workforce. Skill development is one of the essential ingredients for India’s future economic growth as a country. It is the oil that makes the wheels of the country’s growth engine moving.
A skilled youth can seek employability, get into the gig economy, or become an entrepreneur. It opens doors for the youth and increases the company’s productivity, society, and the nation. For youth in challenging situations, be it economic or geographic, the availability of the internet, the expansion of sectors like healthcare, Agri processing, education, hospitality, means that they can be part of booming sectors from across the country.
For educated youngsters and those already employed – the redundancy of what they learned in their education is high. Reskilling is essential to develop the capability and capacity to manage new job profiles, enter new sectors and retain jobs. For small business – like electricians, plumbers, auto mechanics – the change in the products used in their business means that they need to reskill for them to continue in their business.
The country and, indeed, the world is in the midst of transformation. Technology and human behaviour, as well as consumer expectations, have created massive shifts. As the economic ecosystem adjusts to these shifts – skilling and reskilling will play a key role in building capacities and capabilities.
This is the time for a Skilling Revolution. India’s inherent ability to innovate ‘jugaad.”
If combined with trained skills will foster innovation and invention from across the country- rural and urban.
As the world restructures post-COVID, reskilling, upskilling, and new skills will be the drivers, for youth, for the experienced and the seniors. This is an important moment in time, and how we manage the ‘Skill Revolution’ will influence the course of our country’s future.
More About Shaheen Khan
Shaheen Khan has worked in various capacities and discovered the power of training and self-up-skilling. One of her many stints saw her getting involved in the skill development program where she identified the students, their requirements VS Industry expectations. Identifying the gap in the training being provided and the requirement by the industry verticals, she embarked with her own venture in this field, named CEDP Skill Institute.