Conversations – Jyotiraditya Scindia, Powered by IBEF
Published on:
Jan 27, 2012 by
Harini Calamur
under
Brand India, India Adda
Keywords:
Jyotiraditya Scindia is the Minister of State, Ministry of Commerce and
Industry for India. He visited the IndiaAdda at Davos, and I cornered him for a
conversation :D.
On Brand India, the Minister said
Brand India is our
ability of being able to rise to global expectations on our hard economic power
and our soft power. Our diversity and our ability to live with diversity. Our ability
to promote in many ways secularism and human values
We talked about skills, training
and education as a growth area. He believes that a skilled India would be in a
better position to attract funds. This was a theme that had also been addressed
earlier this morning at the panel discussion on Asia. Speaker after speaker
talked about the need for skills development . On this the minister said,
Capital has become
a commodity. Capital is not constrained today. Today countries that have
capabilities, competitive advantages …such as human resource are the ones that
are going to get ahead. We have a tremendous amount of repertoire in that area.
Fact that we have a demographic dividend, 70% of India below the age of 35 – we
need to use that asset in the most positive manner. And, therefore, skilling,
vocational training is of paramount importance.
What we are
looking at in the National Skill development Mission (NSDM) that we have set
up, is vocationally training a 100 million people over the next decade and we
have capitalized that with $200 million. Looking at a PPP model where we are
going to raise that to about 3 billion dollars – looking at our polytechnics
& our ITIs and make sure that they deliver those skills.