India today said the global community should not follow a "one size fits all" policy for human resources development as the needs of each country differ from each other.
Speaking at the 17th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers here, Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal also emphasised that the world should invest in the youth, who are the future providers of services.
Sibal, who took part in a discussion on 'Towards and Beyond Global Goals and Targets - Successes and Emerging Challenges in the Context of a Global Recession', told PTI that he had impressed upon the Commonwealth that the concept of "one size fits all" could not be adopted on human resources development.
"We cannot have 'one size fits all' strategy for every country when it comes to human resource development. Each country's needs in human resource development are different. One cannot have a global discussion on the issue when the regions are different. The Commonwealth needs to have regional strategy and local strategy depending on the needs of the country," the Minister said.
He felt that all talks on reaching the millennium development goals was okay, but these issues, especially the varied needs of each country, had to be looked into seriously.
"The world is highly globalised and the global community should understand the significance of education and realise that it should invest in the future providers of the world, as they will provide the services," Sibal said.
He said he also emphasised the need to use technology. "We desperately need technology. There are three tools which are vital — Finance, Technology and Human Resources.
"There would hardly be a country which has all three. The global community needs to supplement... How is the Commonwealth dealing with this issue?" he asked.
Sibal noted that the pace of modern technology was so fast that the education structure was lagging behind. "Kids nowadays pick up computer skills so fast, but their teachers were still lagging behind. The global community has to look into this," he stressed.
India emphasised during the discussion that technology was going to be a major enabler which should be rightly harnessed.
The Minister felt that while a regional approach was needed, it was also very important that the developed countries invested in developing countries as in the future they too would make use of the skilled pool.
The Commonwealth Education meet concludes on June 19.
