Employee vs Entrepreneur (original) (raw)

Skill gap in India’s Agri-food sector widens albeit Entrepreneurship Euphoria

In India, of late, the phrase ‘agri-entrepreneurship’ has literally become almost ubiquitous and there could be at least hundreds, if not thousands, of organizations, research institutes including Government bodies, private sector and NGOs claiming to be working with rural unemployed youth and college graduates. These youngsters seem to possess agricultural and/or non-agricultural background or related education. When the policy makers and/or civil society organizations think about employment in the agri-food domain, they fall into the ‘entrepreneurship’ trap by default and forget a whole set of other areas that are selectively ignored.

Employees vs Entrepreneurs

There is nothing wrong in promoting entrepreneurship and the idea to promote entrepreneurship as a career option among youth and college graduates is welcome. But in the process, one should not forget the need for ensuring skilled and trained personnel available to be employed in a thriving private sector. Unfortunately, the latter does not receive as much attention as the former.

It is certainly good to have people as ‘entrepreneurs’ creating jobs for themselves and others. But just how many can be such ‘job creators’? Wouldn’t it make sense to look at the widening gap between the ever growing demand for skilled, talented and trained work force which can get employed in the private sector enterprises in seeds, chemicals, biotechnology, basic and applied scientific research, and food processing and retailing domains?

Current Trends and Future Growth

First, let us consider the following facts. The #agrochemical industry in India is valued at US $ 3.8 billion (2012) with hundreds of firms – both domestic and MNCs – operating. The #seed sector is fifth largest in the world with a turnover of US$ 2.1 billion and is growing at close to 15% to 18% annually. India’s #biotechnology sector in India is one of the star performers among the industries in the recent past with an overall revenue of US$ 5 – 7 billion and is expected to grow to US$ 100 billion in the next 10 years. The Agricultural Biotech segment contributes roughly one-sixth of it currently but its share is expected to grow significantly during the period. All these industries need skilled hands and intelligent minds including agronomists, meteorologists, biotechnologists, micro-biologists, soil scientists, engineers, horticulturists, pathologists, and also physics, mathematics, nutrition and chemistry graduates.

There will be huge demand in the agri-food sector for more technicians in the labs and fields, marketing, business management, basic and applied research, and the opportunities are just endless if one looks beyond the conventional engineering or medicine or finance degrees. All these point out to a great transformation in India’s rural & #agrarian #industrial scene in the next decade. However, concerns are raised in terms of availability of #workforce and the real crux of the issue is “employability” of these #graduates.

Demographic Dividend or Disaster?

When one looks at the overall skill #gap situation in India, the oft-used term “demographic dividend” might actually seem a “demographic disaster”. Every year about 12 million young people, which is half of Australia’s population, get added to India’s workforce. However, usually only 2% of them are getting into the #formal sector and there aren’t just enough opportunities for them to get absorbed in high productive, skilled occupations. Most of them remain unskilled or low-skilled. On the other hand, industries like the agri-input sector are facing a difficulties in finding good quality, #skilled persons for employment. This is going to be a huge challenge that youth unemployment may have greater and dangerous consequences as we learnt from other countries in the world. It may lead them to unscrupulous, illegal and dangerous jobs in search of livelihood. Unless their skills are upgraded, their energy, youthful mind and our demographic dividend will be lost completely.

Disconnect: Agricultural Education and Employment

According to available statistics, every year about 15000 students enroll for bachelor degrees in agriculture and related disciplines in India. About 75000 students are studying at various levels at any point of time in the country in the public and private institutes. Nearly 12000 graduates pass out every year in India in agriculture and related streams but only a sixth of them were found to be able to get jobs in public or private sectors. Due to recent explosion of engineering education in India and the associated glamour of the #white-collar jobs, agriculture degrees are almost rated as ‘junk’ by the parents and youngsters are not ready to prefer it as their career option. Nearly half of the graduates and one fourth of the post graduates have difficult time securing gainful employment.

The biggest reason for this conundrum lies in the basic structure of the agricultural education in India and its quality. Further, there is not enough focus on its relevance to the current industry trends and developments and the curriculum is not sufficiently fine-tuned or reviewed to fit the newer dynamic requirements of the globalized world. The industry is moving fast in terms of new technologies getting introduced from elsewhere across the world but the country’s agricultural education and research set up is not being able to cope up with the pace.

Hence, many agri-food industry leaders lament that it is becoming increasingly difficult to get skilled workers with right aptitude, skills and attitude to work in the private sectors. It is a common perception among many graduates who consider private sector jobs as excruciatingly strict and painful employment. Hence they would prefer public sector and/or #Government jobs albeit comparable, if not better career prospects, growth and earnings are possible in the private sector. Among other issues, #job #stability and #security are what they are most worried about and most, if not all, would not be ready to venture out of their comfort zones. In any case, there are people who choose to work in the private agri-food enterprises but the supply of fresh skilled minds and hands is not in tandem with the impressive growth of the sector.

Lessons from other industries

Animal Sciences – It is a great irony that the animal sciences sector is usually considered #allied to the Indian agricultural sector but there is a lot to learn and emulate. The #veterinary and #animal sciences graduates actually study what they need to do in their jobs when they get into the industry and acquire specific skills in addition to bookish knowledge and they actually do what they learn in the colleges. Hence, the sub-sector is on a solid footing when it comes to supply of adequately skilled and trained #manpower currently and in future. This reflects better alignment of their curriculum with the current and future industry trends and needs. Not only the sector is fast growing, there is less stress for the graduates who usually do not wonder what to do after graduating. Unfortunately, this is not happening in agricultural education in India currently, which squarely lags behind the industry’s dynamic trends widening the demand gap for trained, skilled and employable graduates. If not addressed appropriately, the country is going to pay dearly for the loss of great minds not who do not continue working in the sector.

Software – NASSCOM recently initiated several programs to enhance “employability” of engineers in India as reports claim only about 10% of the engineering graduates are actually #employable. While there are no such assessments done for the agricultural industry, it could be similar or even worse.

Manufacturing – The ‘Make In India’ campaign that was recently announced by the #Prime #Minister is targeting several industries including construction and automobiles and aims to create 100 million additional jobs by 2022 in the manufacturing sector. However, the challenges are similar to the agri-industry because of the entrenched social stigma of #blue-collar versus while-collar jobs. Nevertheless, several joint programs are initiated with the support of the industry participants.

Way Forward: Future-proofing India’s Agri-Food Sector

It is very important more than ever to understand the drivers of the next wave of economic growth in India and to look at ways to take India’s agri-food sector to the next level and enhance its contribution to reduce poverty, hunger and malnutrition in the country.

Promoting agribusiness as a great career path

For attracting, retaining & nurturing #youth in agribusiness, it is necessary to demolish certain entrenched #myths and #prejudices that are most common in the society. Most people still perceive agriculture as a dirty, long-hour, less remunerative, less respectful and subsistence work due to social #stratification without realizing the dignity of labor. But it is important to incorporate ‘Agriculture’ as a subject from primary #schools to bust these myths and get youngsters attracted to the oldest and biggest profession in the world. Allocating more budget for creating innovative outreach programs aimed at different stakeholders including mass and targeted awareness campaigns on agribusiness as a great #career path for youngsters is needed urgently.

Revamping Agricultural Education and Research Streams

The first and foremost need is to reform agricultural education and research to get better aligned with current on-ground needs. A compete revamp of #academics and #research streams to be more industry-oriented is the critical need of the hour. It is a common observation by many industry participants that the research and scientific community is getting increasingly cocooned in their own shells of doing research for the sake of it without any relevance to the industry’s current trends. It needs fostering more collaboration with the private sector to ensure agricultural education and research priorities are aligned with the current agri-food industry needs, trends and developments. Involving more private-sector players and expert individuals at the #Board levels is needed to synergize and leverage their expertise in enhancing overall strategic management and governance of the universities and research institutions.

In order to create more jobs, it is imperative to encourage multi-sectoral integrated approaches (Agribusiness + Livestock + Food & Nutrition Science + ICT) and fund more non-traditional, inter-disciplinary research areas that address various complex cross-cutting themes. For example,

* Health + Agri - Non-Communicable Diseases, Nutraceuticals, food fortification;
* Environment + Agri – Sustainability, water conservation;
* Technology + Agri – Precision Hi-tech Ag, Glass-house, Hydroponics, Aeroponics, Geospatial technology

Private vs Public sector employment

It is highly impossible to expect the public sector or Government to create as many jobs to absorb the influx of thousands of graduates every year and it would not be good from the perspective of employee #productivity as well. Hence more focus, resources and budgetary allocation is required to ensure agricultural graduates are made industry-ready and develop the necessary skills beyond curriculum that are needed to be successful in their careers in private sector. Universities and private sector must initiate joint programs to provide practical experiential learning even while students are still in the colleges pursuing graduate or post graduate degrees. Regular interactions with the industry leaders would help them understand what is expected of them as employees and what they would be working on. It would help them gain understanding and develop skills to adapt and apply the knowledge they gain from the syllabus.

Further, it is an entrenched dogma that after studying agriculture, one must either aspire for civil services (UPSC) or become a researcher or start a business as an entrepreneur. If at all one has to join the private sector, jobs in the banking sector, and of late retail industry had been looked at favorably.

In contrast, it would not be an exaggeration to say that those who are working in private companies for example, seed or agrochemical companies do not enjoy a positive connotation. Some may even get accused to the extent of being a slave to MNCs, #anti-national and #anti-farmer. This is probably because of the general image among the public who usually do not know much about the agri-food industry but think that MNCs are here only to make huge profits and expatriate to their parent companies in the Europe or US. Even some domestic private agri-input companies and their employees also get sometimes accused of the above things which are nothing but nonsense.

Skills Beyond Curriculum

Another important component of skill building is to teach the graduates what they are not taught in colleges or what they do not get to learn from the books including training on #interpersonal communications, #presentation skills, personality development, #public speaking, assertiveness and #creative #problem solving etc. Lack of #adaptability, extra-curricular and soft skills are some of the real concerns that make agricultural graduates difficult candidates for employment in general. This is really important since a vast majority of the students (including the author) usually comes from rural areas and have difficulties in spoken English and hence effective communication or articulation of ideas.

While it would indeed be good to have ‘job makers’, in the interest of the country’s largest sector that supports nearly two-thirds of its population (close to 600 million) directly or indirectly, it is equally important to have jobseekers who have the right skills, ability and willingness to become employable in the fast growing private agri-food enterprises and contribute to the country.

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Disclaimer: Views are personal

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