The geopolitics and meanings of India's massive skills development ambitions

This paper interrogates the drivers and meanings behind the dramatic rise of technical and vocational education and training in the policy and political agenda of India. What are the assumptions about the existing traditions and character of India's culture or cultures of skills development? Is the massive planned expansion of skilled people in India simply more of the same, or is there a new paradigm involved? How central will be the role of the private sector and of public private partnerships in the new skills training environment? And how inevitable was it that India should embrace a national vocational qualification framework?

► India aims to train half a billion skilled workers by 2022.
► India's existing mass training system is learning from unskilled labour on the job.
► To reach its new goals, India is accepting many of the items in the international skills toolkit, such as NQF.
► It expects to have a comparative advantage through its demographic dividend giving it the world's youngest workforce.
► To succeed, this massive plan will require sustained, coordinated, inter-ministerial policy commitment and funding.