Bridging the skill gap

Quality training remains an elusive goal

One of the paradoxes of India’s employment paradigm is that joblessness remains a challenge even as the country’s large potential employers complain of a labour shortage. Last week, Larsen & Toubro Chairman S N Subrahmanyan said the engineering giant was facing a manpower shortage of over 45,000 workers and engineers across its businesses. L&T is not an outlier in this respect. Across India, from steel manufacturers in the east to the textile hub of Tiruppur, companies are struggling to find skilled labour for such basic functions as machine operations, welders, fitters, drivers, technicians, carpenters, and plumbers. The