TNM (With ANI Inputs)
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ANI Photo | CEA Nageswaran urges youth to acquire trade skills as software job era ends
Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran has stated that the era dominated by software jobs and MBA degrees is ending, and urged young people to focus on acquiring trade skills and human-centric professions that artificial intelligence (AI) cannot easily replace.
In an interview with ANI, Nageswaran highlighted that while India has greatly benefited from globalisation in services, the world is now becoming more fragmented and insular. This shift makes it essential for the country to enhance its manufacturing competitiveness.
He underlined the importance of tackling both unemployment and unemployability concurrently. “We have no luxury of worrying about only one of the two issues. We must address both. The answer to an unemployment problem is not to follow the old method because capital intensity of growth is, unfortunately, that’s how the world is going. If we follow the Western model and we are a country with scale, there’ll be some industries which will be necessarily capital-intensive and attract less labour or cannot employ more labour. We can’t be lagging because the world will not supply us with those goods. We have to make some of them ourselves. But there is still a lot of space in the labour-intensive manufacturing and labour-intensive services, caregiving, culinary arts, cooking, and hospital staff, and sports education, especially caregiving for elders and counselling for special needs children. In all these areas, the world needs qualified and trained people, not just India. Those are all the areas which will not be impacted by AI. We need to create employability in these areas. And unemployment is, we should call it a livelihood problem,” he said.
The Chief Economic Advisor also pointed out that, unlike countries such as Switzerland, Japan, Korea and China, India gives “little respect” to manual workers including welders, plumbers and electricians. He said this attitude needs to change. “This country, compared to other countries which actually have grown successful, take Switzerland, take Germany, take Japan or Korea or even China, they place a lot of respectability on trade skills. In this country, we give them little respect. If you are a welder, a plumber, an electrician, and a carpenter, etc., India doesn’t consider [them]. … You know, so we kind of made it unacceptable, unrespectable, and unfashionable. I think that needs to change,” Nageswaran told ANI.
Highlighting the changing nature of work, Nageswaran added that technological advancement will not eliminate employability in trade-based and human-facing roles. “The technological advance cannot take away your employability. So you should equip yourself with trade skills. The globalising world gave us an advantage for our software, computer science or MBA education. But that era is over. It’s about trade skills. It’s about soft skills, which AI cannot easily replace, where human presence is required,” he said.
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TNM (With ANI Inputs)
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TNM (With ANI Inputs)
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TNM (With ANI Inputs)
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Home » Nation and Beyond » CEA Nageswaran urges youth to acquire trade skills as software job era ends
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This story is written by TNM Bureau with inputs from ANI. The News Mill is a Guwahati-based digital media with focus on content from across Northeast India and beyond. We can be reached through [email protected]
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