Dilip Thakore interviewed Krishan Khanna, chairman of the Mumbai-based i Watch Foundation, which has been advocating VET education since its promotion in 1993. Excerpts:
Since 1993 you have become a whole-time missionary in the cause of vocational education and training (VET). What factors prompted this advocacy decision?
By the year 1993, I had worked for 32 years in Indian industry as department head, general manager, chief executive and finally promoted two companies. I had also worked for six years in Germany and Japan, both of which had been devastated in World War II, but had sprung back to become the second and third largest economies of the world. This experience left a permanent impression on my world view. Every time I came back to India I was disappointed! It slowly dawned on me that our education system as well as skills-building infrastructure was the weak link. So in 1993 I decided to do something about it and left all active business to pursue the goal of transforming India through the promotion of real education, and VET in particular.
Seventeen years later, how satisfied are you with the progress of i watch in creating awareness about the vital importance of VET for national development?
Fairly satisfied, considering that for the first seven years, we were always discouraged by friends, associates as well as civil society. Considering that we are a small foundation, with two permanent unpaid staff — me and my daughter Devika — and mostly part-time workers, it was an uphill task.
But in the past ten years we have started receiving attention and encouraging feedback from all levels of civil society. During the past five years we have been invited to participate in a number of national committees, chambers of commerce, ministries of education, labour, IT, planning commi-ssion, etc where with our data we have been able to change mindsets, and shift focus towards skills building, vocational training and allied areas of human resource development.
In particular, Indian industry which is the largest user of skilled and trained workers, has exhibited minimal interest in formal VET. How do you explain this paradox, bearing in mind that it has the highest in-house training costs worldwide?
Number of reasons. For 44 years, between 1947-1991 large business was protected by the licence-permit-quota regime. So there was no real desire for quality improvement, labour product-ivity, competitiveness, export worthi-ness, or cost reduction. After 1991 there was a paradigm shift, and quality human capital started showing spectacular results in some companies. In the past ten years, naxalism, unemployment, slow growth of exports and agriculture started becoming areas of national concern. Slowly, the political leadership, industry and civil society started realising the big advantage of vocational training and skills development, and how it has helped the economic growth of the EU after 1945 and more recently, China and the Asian-Tiger nations.
VET is as important for improving agriculture productivity as for improving shop floor productivity in industry. What’s your comment?
Absolutely right. China has 350,000 vocational centres in rural areas and only 150,000 centres in urban China. Against China’s 500,000 centres skilling nearly 90 million people per year, India’s estimated 17,000 centres upskill about 3 million per year. It’s no wonder that China whose arable land area is smaller than India’s, produces twice as much foodgrains annually.
At what stage of the education process in your opinion, should VET be introduced as a study option — during school or after class X?
Mindset change is very important. Pre-VET should start from class VIII and actual VET can start anytime after that.
Somewhat belatedly, awareness of the vital importance of VET has spread within government, civil society and academia. How optimistic are you about universalisation of VET in India in the near future?
In 2010, I’ve become fairly optimistic. The major chambers of commerce — CII, FICCI, ASSOCHAM and PHDCC — have taken the new VET initiative of the prime minister and NSDC very seriously, and so have all the major ministries at the Centre such as human resource development, labour and employment. This is a start, but not good enough. All state governments and Union territories need to become involved. The country’s 21,000 colleges, 100,000 secondary schools, 100 million MSMEs in agriculture, services and manufacturing need to be sensitised. We have a long way to go, but the first steps have been taken.