Recognize skill sets in armed forces to Create in India: Experts

New Delhi, March 6 (IANS) The skills ministry will soon tie-up with the defence ministry to take forward the Make in India innovation to Create in India, a minister has said.

“We are looking at using the last year of service of JCOs and below to train them (in specialised jobs). If they don’t want to come out as trainers, they can come out as entrepreneurs,” Minister of State for Skills & Entrepreneurship Rajiv Pratap Rudy said at the One Globe 2015 conference here, adding his ministry will soon sign a MoU with the defence ministry for this.

“Make in India will not be successful unless we have skilled workforce. In China, 47 percent of the workforce is skilled, in Australia about 60 percent, in Britain 68 percent, in Germany 74 percent, in Japan 80 percent, and in South Korea 96 percent, but in India, in 65 years, just two percent of our workforce is skilled.

“In the next five years or so, we will have the largest youth population of about 465 million in the age group of 20 to 35 years. If you look at the eight to nine percent growth in the next decade or so, infrastructure will require another 100 million people, automotive & auto care will require about 35 million people, health would require about 12 million people and textiles about 36 million people,” Rudy said.

“We have teachers in this country but there is a dearth of trainers. We are thinking of many out-of-the-box ideas for creating an ecosystem for the skilled manpower in this country,” he added.
The fourth annual edition of One Globe knowledge conference also brought together top and highly decorated veterans from the army, navy and air force to deliberate on the technological and skills impact of indigenization & modernization of India's defence industry.

“Whenever a defence serviceman retires, he is always put in security-related job roles. But there are as many as 972 different skills in defence sector including communications and satellite technologies,” said Major General Kuldip Sindhu (retd), who served as the first managing director of the ECHS health scheme for defence pensioners and widows, and was responsible for training & rehabilitating nearly 25 lakh ex-soldiers & 400,000 widows into civil life in his capacity as director general (Resettlement).

“Instead of just a Make In India strategy, which can also include mere assembling of semi-knocked down kits or completely knocked down kits, we need a Create in India strategy to help India become a defense equipment exporter, by encouraging our people to use brainpower to address the nation’s priorities creatively. The ingenuity of our dabbawallahs is being taught as a case study at leading institutes like Harvard and we should replicate similar creativity in our defence capabilities.

“The work of our Ecology Battalions in the Himalayas is well known. We need to create the recognition and incentives for such a vibrant variety of skills in our defence forces. The average retirement age of our jawans is around 40 years so there is a lot of residual capacity that can be put to good use,” he added.

“On the skills side, the armed forces need to learn from the civil airlines industry where the retired airmen form the backbone for running all the aviation related equipment,” said Air Marshal PK Mehra (retd), who headed the South Western Air Command,

“We have squandered away the technological superiority we had against our opponents in the 1960s and 1970s when we were designing and manufacturing world-class aircraft with a platform comparable to the one used in the US, UK, France or anywhere else. But somewhere, our government found an easier way to import technology at friendly prices and our Indian developers and engineers went into sleep mode for 25 years.

“You can’t call yourself a powerful nation if you are leaning on others too much and are importing 70% of your arms requirements. We need to create an enabling environment for the industry to invest in R&D,” he added.

Former army vice chief Lt. Gen. A S Lamba (retd) stressed on the need for indigenization of defence equipment, adding: “We need to learn from the Americans, Israelis and others to be able to become a defense exporting nation. We must place trust in our private sector and given them opportunities unless proven otherwise.”

“The recommendations made by the Kelkar committee were good but their implementation went wrong. Every bureaucrat today is fearful of taking or not taking decisions. National security cannot be outsourced and Make In India puts the focus back on manufacturing and indigenization,” he added.

Proposing a three-stage filter while importing defense technology, Vice Admiral Pradeep Kaushiva (retd), a former director of the National Maritime Foundation, said: “One, we should ask if it is likely to be used against the exporting country and its allies? Two, will it result in shrinking Indian market? And three, is it likely to reduce the market in the country exporting that technology?”

Policy framework by the government should incentivize public-private partnership (PPP), he added, noting that India’s skill and technology development failed to evolve in line with the industrial revolution.