Pic: DFU Publications
India's inherent creativity should be combined with acquired skills so as to move from supply-driven skilling to a demand-driven scenario and then onwards to innovation-driven skill development to foster value creation, Darlie O Koshy, director-general and CEO at the Apparel Training and Design Centre (ATDC) has argued in a new book.
Towards this, Koshy has called for a ‘RUN’ (re-skilling, up-skilling, new-skilling) strategy, especially for the 356 million youth and the 450 million work-labour force across sectors with a special focus on the largest employment generating sectors, which include the textile-apparel-fashion-lifestyle-retail (TAFLR) sector, by adopting a ‘T-shaped' skilling approach.
Koshy has said this in his book Runway to Skilled India, set to be released in New Delhi on February 19. The book is a sequel to his much-acclaimed earlier work Indian Design Edge. The takeaways in the book are rooted in the spirit of 'Atmanirbhar Bharat' and making 'India skilled'.
The new book is intended to facilitate a focused RUN strategy to confront and conquer the disruptive changes in employment patterns and requirements so as to redirect skill development efforts by 2022 when India turns 75, and to go beyond to achieve the status of a ‘Skill Capital for the World’.
Koshy believes that the spirit of Atmanirbhar Bharat is an overarching concept of self-esteem and self-reliance for every Indian. For this, rediscovering and repurposing India’s innate creativity and traditional skills embedded in crafts, arts and design is critical and the ‘traditional and newly emerging clusters’ offer the best opportunity with e-commerce opening up new markets. The ODOP scheme in UP introduced in 2018 exemplifies such an approach.
He also argues for redirecting and restructuring post-COVID skill development by assessing ‘skill density’ of each course to move to a ‘hybrid’ learner-centric pedagogy and to integrate with digital learning platforms as the World Economic Forum (WEF) has also recently called for.
The book examines the role of traditional crafts and other natural manufacturing clusters and suggests proactive design, technology and business interventions so that the job losses suffered during COVID times can be mitigated while providing new avenues for creating jobs and providing economic sustenance and livelihoods.
Fibre2Fashion News Desk (RKS)
India's inherent creativity should be combined with acquired skills so as to move from supply-driven skilling to a demand-driven scenario and then onwards to innovation-driven skill development to foster value creation, Darlie O Koshy, director-general and CEO at the Apparel Training and Design Centre (ATDC) has argued in a new book set to release soon.