Arvind Bali, CEO, TSSC at Convergence India 2022

Arvind Bali, CEO, Telecom Sector Skill Council address on the keynote session: ‘Is the Make in India Initiative Creating Opportunities for the Telecom Industry’ in the 29th Convergence India 2022:

“As far as skilling is concerned, I think skilling requirements are driven from four major factors. The most important factor is that presently the technology is changing so fast that nobody is able to catch up. There was a time when something new used to come and there was eight to ten years to monetize it and the next technology would come. But now we are at 4G and then 5G and we are already working on 6G. There was a time when we were very happy when Mbps speed came. And then we were talking about Giga speeds. And now we are talking about tera speeds. Ultimately, especially in telecom, so much work is happening, so many requirements are happening and the main reason for that is that we have over 7.8 billion population of the world, and there are estimates that in 2030, we’ll be needing at least 50 billion sim of connected devices.

Now, for that we need networks, speeds and latencies, etc. Plus, the way everything like internet, shopping and everything is changing very fast. Whereas academia is not really able to catch up because they have to follow a structure and the new syllabus which comes. So, one piece of skilling, which is required is, that college pass outs, whom we have to make employable. That means we have to give them small modules, and they learn those modules and straight away they become employable. Then the second kind of skills are required is for people who are working, like the manual workers but if they continue doing what they are doing, they will not produce quality and if we skill them to do better quality, like showing how a fiber work is happening.

Same is the case with the factories, like we see in factories in China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea versus our factories. The moment, the companies invest into skilling of the workers, the productivity and quality level goes up, and all other things become better. I think one is for new technology, other is for better productivity, we need all the types of skilling requirements. And the third, and the most important part is that knowing all about the new technologies that are coming. All youth and everybody have to be trained on that and they have to be skilled, reskilled and upskilled. So, all that work has to happen in a very structured manner.

In the last seven years, a lot of work has happened in skilling space. I think a lot of work has happened in the “Skill India’ Mission under the Prime Minister’s vision. Telecom sector itself has got more than 1000 training centers and we have already established 15 Center of Excellence (CoE). So, all that is available and only thing is, there is still a big gap between manpower where they don’t know how to get the job and the companies, they don’t know how to source the right manpower. We are actually working on filling those gaps. And ultimately, we are talking to the companies and asking them to tell us their requirement. Either, we do partly classroom training and rest on-the-job training or take them on NAPS and multiple schemes and ultimately give them benefits.

There are already around 4.5 million people are already working in the telecom sector. So, all the good and well-established companies today upskill their employees so that work continues to happen. The others are the people who are passing out, they are also smart and they know that where is their skill gap. we also teach and guide them and then they bridge that skill gap. The last piece is as far as the workers are concerned; I think that was the biggest challenge. Now the government has come up with beautiful schemes. Like NAPS is a scheme where 15% of your employees, you can keep them as apprentice. There is no minimum wage, PF or ESI requirement and even the age could be as young as 16 to school/college pass out or an employee. Plus, the latest scheme which is coming up which is National Education Policy 2020 (NEP), where the government is saying that you need not to go to school or college and you work in the factory. We will give you grades, and as per the grades after ten or five years, you will start getting degrees by just working in the factories.

One is conventional skilling because maximum manpower demands are in factories, the technician workers, etc. But now there is a very big shift now on IoT, machine learning and recently Prime Minister has announced that there has to be a very big focus on drone technology. So, we are actually working on drone technology, we are going to launch a Center of Excellence in Patna where there will be drone technology available and similarly in other places. So, basically all these future skills is one area which we are doing for qualified engineers, and upskilling purposes, and for mass consumption, like a factory usage, we are still training people on SMPs or on software designs, etc.

Last Five Years the kind of focused work is happening, especially on education and skilling that is totally unmatched. The central and state governments itself are working on that and that is going to bring a lot of change. And I’m not talking only about the telecom sector, I think the way government is covering all the 39 sectors and focusing. So, there is a big change in the last five years.”

CT Bureau