Soft Skills

Around 400 police personnel specially trained in soft skills will be deployed at prominent tourist hubs, airport, railway stations and ISBTs to help delegates and other visitors during next month's G20 Summit, officials said on Saturday. These personnel, moving in multipurpose vehicles labelled 'Tourist Police', will be deployed at 21 locations such as monuments, popular markets, memorials, airport terminals, interstate bus terminals (ISBTs) and railway stations, the officials at the Lt Governor's Office said. Each team comprising one Indo-Tibetan Border Police commando, a gunman and a driver will be accompanied by probationer sub-inspectors as in-charges, they said. Every Tourist Police unit member underwent a task-oriented training progamme in association with Delhi Tourism and other agencies during which they were trained in soft skills; effective communication, including speaking in English; topography and city landmarks; and firing practice, they said. According to the officia

India will need 30 million digitally skilled professionals by 2026, and about 50 per cent of the current workforce would require to re-skill themselves in areas of emerging technologies, report said.

In a Q&A, Samyak Chakrabarty says jobs surviving automation will need skills involving communication, critical thinking, negotiation and storytelling

Governance is perceived as an abstruse and technical subject, connecting the three dots of accounting, legal, and regulatory

Says pace of skills transformation is slower than the pace of digital transformation in India, as is the case in several countries across the world

India's overall rank in the report was 67 globally, with 38% proficiency

Etiquette classes today cater to a wide audience of job seekers, front-desk execs, business heirs, romantics, students and even those with low self-esteem

Several such Indian and global programmes, aimed at school and college students, have actually helped them prepare for higher education and chart their career path

Though Odisha boasts of a cluster of engineering and management institutions and draws students from elsewhere, the performance of some of them on placements is woeful

With reference to "The soft skills trap" (May 3) by Ajit Balakrishnan, the concept of soft skills and English language is being wrongly clubbed with critical thinking and analytical reasoning. What is lacking is critical thinking and analytical reasoning. English skills can come way after that. As Vinod Khosla says, the ability to read and decipher a full edition of The Economist is more important than the ability to speak English. Communication matters, not language. This problem isn't confined to engineering colleges, but extends to business education. MBA education the world over has serious limitations. In India, thanks to the shortage of faculty, it is even more acute.Arun Bharadwaj by emailLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargNew Delhi 110 002Fax: (011) 23720201E-mail: letters@bsmail.inAll letters must have a postal address and telephone number

With reference to "The soft skills trap" (May 3), actually we need better quality of the hard STEM (science, technology, engineering and math)-based skills. That's where we are getting beaten. In quantity, we are masters. Quality is where the rub lies. Soft skills can always be learnt on the job - from mentors, peer groups and bosses who have gone through the grind.Probir Roy MumbaiLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargNew Delhi 110 002Fax: (011) 23720201E-mail: letters@bsmail.inAll letters must have a postal address and telephone number

A more rigorous training in core skills is required to boost the engineering talent in the country, instead of a varnish of 'soft skills'