Bengaluru: “Urbanization is a job creator,” said Mohandas Pai, Chairman, Manipal Global Education, on Thursday. He was speaking at a panel discussion on “Whose responsibility is it to improve the employability quotient of the country”, organised by Meritrac Services in the city to commemorate the launch of its new unique employability assessment programme ‘Acetrac’.
Pai stressed that India produces 25 million babies per year, of which one per cent die due to diseases. Comparatively China churns out only about 16 million babies per year, he said. This according to him puts India at an advantageous position.
He added that 24 million young Indians reach the adult age of 21 every year, while only about 6 million jobs are available. Stressing on the so-called importance of urbanization, Pai said that, “China is ahead of India and has achieved 50 per cent urbanisation.”
As for welfare schemes like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act Pai said that it was a big scam. “Digging holes and then filling them up at night.” This is how he described the scheme.
He added that in the West automation and robots had taken over many human jobs. “This has to be carefully dealt with,” he said.
Gopal Devanhalli, CEO of Meritrac Services, said, “Numerous education reform initiatives in India have resulted in a surge in the Gross Employment ratio. This coupled with a high number of educated youth and a substantial shift in the job landscape has made employability and the right kind of employability critical.”
Nagendran Sunderarajan, Executive Vice president of Meritrac Services said, “Corporates and their recruiters have been looking for a solution that can help them recruit job-ready candidates. The educational institutions and the student community have been looking for solutions that will help them improve their employability quotient during their college study.” He added that Acetrac was the product of this effort.
Developed by Meritrac, Acetrac is a comprehensive employability assessment programme that assesses candidates on employability skills at regular intervals during the graduation study. It provides developmental inputs and detailed feedback to students by benchmarking them against industry standards and helps them prepare better for a challenging career.
