Rebooting India through Atmanirbhar Bharat

A screenshot from the session

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The Covid-19 pandemic has been widely discussed as a health crisis, as a situation of a global spread of an unknown virus that can impact and kill several thousand human beings. The primary focus of all containment strategies, has therefore (and rightly so) been to save lives. Lockdowns and extended lockdowns were nothing but a manifestation of the same imagination. However, as we slip deeper into the pandemic, we are beginning to realize that the most popular solution (lockdown) to the health crisis has in fact created an equally disturbing ‘economic’ crisis in India and across the world. Governments are now facing a far bigger challenge as opposed to early 2020; they are now required to respond to a health crisis as well as an economic crisis.

The earliest and the most noticeable sign of the economic cost of a nationwide lockdown was the mass exodus of migrants from their dwellings to their homes. However, those were the early days of the lockdown and very clearly, the health crisis seemed more real than its economic counterpart. Among other things, the urge and desperation of this reverse migration exposed the fragility in their sustenance cycles, which also form the bedrock of the Indian economy. The lockdowns and the economic crisis have revealed the fact that the pillars of the Indian economy are not elastic and that this lack of elasticity renders India’s growth extremely vulnerable to shocks like the current pandemic.

In 2015, the Government of India launched the Skill India mission. The objective of this mission was to empower the youth of the country with skills that would make them more employable and more productive in the work environment. The launch of the mission was an implicit acknowledgement of the above stated characteristic of the Indian economy. In fact, the need to develop a skilled workforce and a robust economy is so profound in the current scenario that even in the National Education Policy 2020, a component for early skill development has been introduced.

Skilling, upskilling and re-skilling coupled with financial inclusion and credit availability is a strategy that the nation needs to religiously endorse in the aftermath of the pandemic. Employment seekers need to be provided with skills essential for the preferred job and the individuals seeking to start their own enterprises need to be provided vocational skills along with support in setting up an enterprise. A successful and a timely delivery of the intervention could be ensured by involving locally popular and active resources like Non-Governmental Organizations and Self-Help Groups.

A Lucknow based CSR professional Mr. Pradeep Singh has brought together a team of development enthusiasts and experts who, since July 2020, have been passionately organizing the Atmanirbhar Bharat Webinar series. Through the series, they aim to inform people in rural India about a variety of vocations and income options that can be accessed through minimal skills, and to provide training for a variety of vocations. In the fifth week of the series the importance of skilling, upskilling and reskilling was discussed along with a discussion on the recent developments (crowd funding and social stock exchange) to strengthen the social sector.

Across the globe, lockdowns are being lifted and people have started coming out of their homes despite an even greater possibility of infection. This is truer for India where a greater number of cases are being recorded almost every second day. However, with the medical response to the health crisis well in place, the nation needs to prepare and work to implement the skill solution to the economic crisis.

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