Poised to become an economic powerhouse, yet constrained by development challenges of a very large population, India has realised that empowerment of masses through employability is the only key to poverty eradication. As it sets off on the path of skills development movement, what can it learn from the experiences in other countries, which have successfully implemented skills development programmes albeit in smaller magnitudes. An international understanding, including understanding of international standards and parameters in skills, and workplace practices is indeed considered important by India. Providing an international perspective and experience to the skills development programmes in the country is the International Labour Organisation, which is commemorating the Asian Decent Work Decade (2006-2015) and which, in association with the Government of India, employers and workers and others, is striving to make an impact at the policy level, as well as initiate small measures to bring about a change at grassroots. What are these interventions, and what is the reach and impact of these, Leyla Tegmo-Reddy and Akiko Sakamoto discuss.
Leyla Tegmo-Reddy has been with the ILO since last 28 years. She worked primarily in human resources before being posted as deputy director for India in the Nineties, then as Director, ILO, Nepal for five years and now as subregional director. She covers SAARC countries and Iran. Akiko Sakamoto, who has been with ILO for the last seven years, has been specialised in skills and employability issues. Prior to her work in ILO, she conducted academic research on these issues at the University of London. She has spent three years in India with ILO.
Excerpts from the interview:
We are in the ‘Asian Decent Work Decade’. So what aspects do “Decent Work for All” include?
Leyla: Decent work means not just more jobs but better jobs. Better jobs means jobs with security, safety, human dignity and jobs which give people a voice. ILO has four strategic objectives. One is fundamental principles and right of work, which means no child labour, no bonded labour, no discrimination, freedom of association to bargain collectively. The next aspect is employment promotion, which includes skills, micro and small enterprise development. The other aspect is social protection — what happens when something goes wrong, if one gets ill, loses a job for some reason and how jobs should be safe and secure. This aspect includes migration, social security and preventive measures such as occupational safety and health, issues related to HIV-AIDS and the workplace. The fourth is the voice issue. That is strong workers’ organisations, strong employers’ organisations, stronger labour administration and tripartite dialogue between ministry of labour, workers and employer organisations and civil society.
What initiatives has ILO taken for the goal of decent work?
Leyla: Decent work is a global goal, which has been recognised at the highest levels in all countries although initially it grew from the ILO. We work very closely with the actors in the world of work - governments, employers and workers.
So we have the global goal, and we also have the goal at country level. There are certain fundamental principles and rights which cannot be compromised such as our principles on discrimination and the elimination of child labour and forced labour. But we realise that each country has a different level of development. So in each country we take up decent work country programme. We discuss with the country government, employers and workers as to what can be achieved realistically and have an impact over a defined period. We have developed a decent work country programme for India too. And here we work in three priority areas: The first is enhancing opportunities for productive work for men and women, both upstream work, at policy level, and at grassroots. We feed from policy down to grassroots, and grassroots up to policy. So there is a linkage: what’s going to work, what’s going to make a difference. With that approach we are working very closely with the government and other stakeholders on skills policy and employment policy.
The next priority is extending social protection. Because only limited population has any access to social protection, although a number of important schemes have come out in a few states.
And the last part is elimination of unacceptable forms of labour, and here our focus is on worst forms of child labour as also child labour in general. Also, the prevention of bonded labour and trafficking.
You mentioned your partnership with the Government. Which are the other players you are working closely with?
Leyla: The ILO’s nodal ministry is the Ministry of Labour and Employment. Skills and employment are not solely the mandate of the Ministry of Labour. There are many other actors, such as the Planning Commission, Ministry of HRD and other ministries that offer skills training or are in sectors with large numbers of workers, such as agriculture, construction and tourism etc. Since effective, implementable policies are the objective, one has to take into consideration what the other ministries are thinking and what they wish to achieve. Then, of course, we need inputs of the states. Any policy that doesn’t take inputs of the states will never fly. It might become something on the bookshelf. The other stake holders are local industry organisations, sectoral actors, workers’ organisations and employers organisations, and civil society, the large professional community, UN agencies and others.
So we do policy-level work, and walk the talk work. And they both feed into each other.
Besides working with the government at policy level, how do you disseminate information about all these issues at grass-root levels?
Leyla: We have a number of projects with large outreach. For example the child labour project, the HIV/AIDS project, post-Tsunami livelihoods projects, workers’ and employers’ education projects. Within a “project” we promote decent work. We look at things holistically and fit the projects into the larger picture. In child labour project we also look at livelihood for parents and productive skills for adolescents towards their finding decent work. Gender equality is cross-cutting in all our work.
What is the geographical reach of ILO in the country?
Leyla: We are working in quite a number of states on different initiatives. In skills we are working in several states, including UP and Delhi/Noida, with some very interesting initiatives. That’s particularly for informal economy workers. We are also working in Tamil Nadu and Kerala for post-Tsunami livelihoods. And in the domain of child labour we are working in seven states, in five of them in five districts and two of them in two districts. In Tamil Nadu we also work for prevention of bonded labour, which we are going to take up in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa. We also have two programmes on social dialogue on child labour and youth employment. We also have some ongoing livelihoods initiatives in Rajasthan and Bihar.
While we have our decent work country programme, the UN family has the ‘United Nations Development Assistance Framework’ and the ILO is very closely involved in that. And there the main focus is on the BIMARU states.
Coming to skills, how do you identify the skills areas: which skills to take up, and in which states?
Akiko: We identify the area of intervention in association with the Ministry of Labour and Employment. One of the examples is the Skills Development Initiative in UP and Delhi/Noida, which Leyla has mentioned. We have targeted the unorganised sector workers, specifically brassware sector in Moradabad and glassware in Ferozabad. We are now also working on domestic work in Delhi/Noida.
The skills development initiative is essentially a government programme. But the ILO has come to partner with the ministry of labour and employment. The ministry asked how best ILO could help in what the government was planning to do in this scheme. In Moradabad ILO had prior interventions too. So we are building, rather than starting from the scratch so there is some continuity.
What is the expertise ILO provides? Is it the training or funding?
Akiko: We are a technical agency and not a funding agency. What is the added value? International experience, works done in other countries which may be adapted, which may be useful for the country’s development processes. ILO has developed a number of tools including training for rural and economic empowerment (TREE). We also have a very well-known programme for entrepreneurship development called ‘start and improve your business’. It has many different levels, starting from somebody who hasn’t yet fully generated an idea; to the next level of starting the enterprise; the next level of having the enterprise but improving it; and finally the growth of the enterprise. The programme looks at demands, raw material, what’s available. The whole objective of imparting skills is to make a person employable. For that, it is important to be clear about ‘what training is for’ ie the identification of employment opportunities prior to training. It would also include social skills, and holding hand after the training in the form of job placement and other business development support for those who opted for self-employment.
There are also a number of technical aspects to running a skills project. Skills is not an end in itself but a means to an end, which is getting employment and improving the overall working and living conditions of workers and their families. So how to design a training programme which is linked with labour market and employment demands, train a person with a focus on practical skills and competencies, and assess a person who already has some skills, raise demands for higher level of skills among employers etc is the crux. There are a number of projects and initiatives already in India, and what we are trying to do is take what already exists, build on them by bringing in international expertise. Many initiatives are taking place but it seems to me that how to coordinate these initiatives, them to a common platform, under a common policy, are very crucial.
Leyla: In ILO India, we have a team of international technical specialists. Akiko is a senior specialist on skills, we have a senior specialists on employment, social protection, small and medium enterprises, child labour, international labour standards, occupational safety and health, employers’ activities, workers’ activities, social dialogue and labour administration, enterprise development and HIV/AIDS. On skills let me highlight just one initiative, although we have many interesting ones. This concerns our programme with the ministry of labour and other stakeholders on skills and decent work for domestic workers. Normally one thinks that domestic workers don’t need any skills. But the work which Akiko is doing with DGET shows how if you unpack the different aspects of domestic work, there are certainly skills that are required and can be upgraded and lead to advancements in one’s work/career.
Akiko: We are not looking at domestic help as an unskilled occupation. There are different levels of skills involved and they can excel at that if they had adequate training. The areas of skills could be childcare, elderly care, cooking, washing/cleaning etc. They can start from the entry level and move on to a higher level: from basic cooking to assistant cook to multi-cuisine, for example. They ought to know about hygiene and what to do in case of an emergency. You would value these skills and you would pay more for that.
This brings me to the premise that a certification will enable a person to get a better job. But will certification make a difference when it comes to payment, particularly in the unorganised sector?
Leyla: Hopefully, acceptance will grow. Certification could help people get work in the organised sector, even overseas. Otherwise if they don’t have anything to show, they may not get a skilled job. Certification will also help artisans and those who work in traditional skills.
Is ILO too working towards certification? There has also been the talk that the training agency should not be the certifying agency. So are you planning to partner any agency for that?
Akiko: Certification is part of the training in Ferozabad, Moradabad and Delhi/Noida. We are trying to give official recognition, NCVT, under the government’s Skills Development Initiative Scheme, to these people.
For that we are partnering with the ministry of labour and employment. Their design is such that training providers and certifiers are separate. So we will take the same approach as well. If the trainer is the same as evaluator, the impartiality could be compromised.
How do you see Indian skills infrastructure today, in terms of funding, trainers, employability?
Akiko: There are many skills challenges. Infrastructure needs to be updated, including equipment. The system needs more flexibility to meet different needs of trainees, but without losing a national coherence. The system needs to reach out to a large number of people with limited education and those in the unorganized sector. Training needs to be more closely linked with the labour market and employment demands. There is also a shortage of trainers. But at the same time I am encouraged by how the government is trying to address these issues. At the highest level, the prime minister is setting up structures that can facilitate a number of initiatives needed to address these challenges. Funds are flowing in, and the commitment is there. The major change is that the government is now openly stating that the size of the challenge is so big that the government cannot do it alone and calling for partnerships. The ministries/departments and the industry are extremely proactive. Workers organisations are also now working with the ILO, on skills development programmes. Although it may sound like a cliché, but one can actually see Public Private Partnership in action in this sphere.
You had mentioned country-specific approaches. Akiko, where does India stand in comparison to other Asian countries?
Akiko: Many countries in East Asia have faced similar skills challenges in the past. They realised they don’t have the natural resources, only human resources. From the very beginning they placed human resources at the centre of development strategy. Many of them actually did very well in that regard. I cannot directly compare where India stands now and also India is so vast with different needs, but these countries have had similar challenges and to a large extent have overcome them. Their experiences can provide useful insights that India can learn from and India can also provide a number of insights for other countries due to its sheer diversities.
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