National Council of Applied Economic Research
In response to recent concerns expressed by Indian industry about the ‘employability’ of school and university graduates, this paper examines the role of pedagogy in developing life skills (or 21st century skills) and how these can be incorporated in the school/university curriculum. In recent curricular frameworks, life skills have been incorporated within the school curriculum... Read More
Educationists have had long debates on the efficacy of traditional forms of education versus vocational training. Even as India grapples with the challenges of improving the quality of primary and secondary education, there appears to be a policy shift in India, favouring vocational trainings that target the skill development of workers. This paper tries to... Read More
These summaries were prepared on the basis of the interviews of various stakeholders involved in skilling from education to vocational training at firms and the assessment of skills.
Indian states are divergent in terms of pursuing their own economic policies linked to education, employability and employment. States significantly differ in terms of resource endowments, especially on endowments related to skill. This is reflected in the unequal distribution of educational capabilities, employability and skill intensity in workforce, employment and other key indicators. In effect,... Read More
The Economic Surveys (2014–15 and 2015–16) have, over the years, stressed on the need to create jobs to meet the needs of a burgeoning population. However, the question as to which sector has the most potential to create jobs and at what level have often been left unanswered. The objective of this paper is to... Read More
Over the last two decades, less than half of the Indians who sought jobs actually got them, with many more millions set to enter the job market over the next two decades. Despite extensive unemployment and under-employment, however, there is a growing shortage of skilled workers. One of the ways to address this skills shortage... Read More
Demographic transition, economic uncertainty and technological changes have come together to create a concoction in India that has the potential to boil over economically and socially, if not skilfully managed. One path that could steady the future of India is to both create jobs that will absorb the burgeoning population and make the population work... Read More
The objective in this paper is to define the full range of employability skills from Pre-Kindergarten to Higher Education and integrate it to the ground-level realities in the Indian context. It clearly identified that there are four types of skills –cognitive, socio-emotional, physical or psychomotor and job-specific skills. Every job role requires a different permutation... Read More
Do agglomeration-based spillovers impact firms more than the technical know-how obtained through inter-firm collaboration? Quantifying the effect of these treatments on firm performance can be valuable for policy-makers as well as managers/entrepreneurs. I observe the universe of Indian MSMEs inside an industrial cluster but with no collaboration (Treatment Group 1), those in collaboration with other... Read More
Budget subsidies have been defined as the unrecovered cost of economic and social services. The incidence of these implicit and explicit budget subsidies provided by the central and state governments has declined from about 12.9 % of GDP in 1987-88 to 10.3 % at present. The bulk of these subsidies is provided by the states... Read More
