How can CSR support the Make in India movement?
The ‘Make in India’ week is set to take place in Mumbai, the commercial capital of India from February 13 to February 18, 2016. Expected to attract many foreign investors and investments in India, the event would be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on February 13th at the MMRDA grounds.
PM Modi in his first year of governance mandated Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and created a strong buzz around it. Then came Make in India, Digital India and Start Up India campaigns.
A lot is expected from the movements and especially the upcoming Make in India week. The week-long event, aims to provide greater momentum to the Make in India initiative, to showcase to the world the achievements of the nation in its manufacturing sector and to promote India as preferred manufacturing destination globally.
Nirmala Sitharaman, minister of state (independent charge) for Commerce and Industry, said, “The government has incessantly pushed policy measures to boost manufacturing and today FDI in India is growing at 48 per cent while globally there is a sharp fall.
The global business community has responded enthusiastically to Indian economy’s revivalist fervour and Make in India Week will further showcase the nation’s accomplishments in manufacturing and position India as investment, innovation and manufacturing hub.” Government delegations from 49 countries and business delegations from 68 countries would be hosted during the week.
Some of the key government delegations would include Prime Minister led delegations from Finland, Sweden and Lithuania and Deputy Prime Minister led delegation from Poland. High level Government representatives are accompanied by large business delegations.
The vision of India as an international manufacturing hub entails a huge skilled taskforce. This is where CSR can play a vital role. “India has a huge population but frankly we are lacking in skills in certain areas. What the world looks at is also the quality of output which is very closely connected to skills.
CSR can play an important role in making India skilled and have a workforce skilled in the manufacturing sector,” said Dr Pawan Goenka, chairman CII National Committee on Intellectual Property and Executive Director & Group President (Auto & Farm Sector), Mahindra and Mahindra. Adi Godrej, chairman, Godrej Group had mentioned in an interview that India suffers from ‘unemployability’ and not ‘unemployment’. According to him many jobs lie vacant because adequate people with adequate skills are not available. As per the India Skill Report 2016, the employability index showed a minor improvement from last year, rising to 38.12% from 37.22%.
The hiring sentiment also looked positive, with employers across sectors expecting an average increase of about 14% from last year’s hiring numbers. “Though this number is an improvement from the number of past two years – 37.22% (2015) and 33.95% (2014), but it clearly shows the need for the initiatives to be taken up by government towards skill development. However these initiatives need to be immediate and impactful, if the gap between the supply and the demand side is to be diminished,” the report read. Government is also trying hard to skill the Indian youth through its various schemes.
The National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) has a mandate to deliver skill development to 150 million youth by 2022. But the mammoth undertaking of skilling India would be accomplished sooner with the involvement of private players through their CSR activities. Jayant Krishna, CEO, NSDC says, “Industry needs to intensify funding part of the training cost as an investment for skilling/up-skilling its own manpower and adopt skill development as a significant component under their CSR efforts. I am confident that with adequate support from the industries and corporates, ‘India can surely become a skill capital of the world.’” Skill training can prove to be a good choice for CSR activity as it might end up benefiting both the company as well as the trained employees.
According to a recent report published by Crisil Foundation, ‘Education and Skill Training’ sector was the highest gainer in FY 2014-2015 with 33% of CSR funds. The number is good to start with but further emphasis is needed to attain the dream of Skill India and Make in India.
