India wants manufacturing to become a bigger engine of economic growth, exports and employment. But can the country build factories at scale without building the skilled workforce those factories need?
In this video, Debashis Basu examines one of the biggest constraints on India’s manufacturing ambitions: the shortage of formally trained and industry-ready workers.
India has invested heavily in skill-development schemes, ITIs, apprenticeships and programmes such as PMKVY. Yet formal vocational training still reaches only a small share of young Indians. The challenge is not simply the number of people who receive training—it is whether they acquire skills that employers actually need.
From CNC operators and technicians to workers skilled in automation, electronics, embedded software, AI and cybersecurity, manufacturing is changing rapidly. The question is whether India’s education and training systems are changing fast enough with it.
The experiences of China, Taiwan and Vietnam offer important lessons. Their vocational education systems have been more closely connected to industrial requirements, employers and changing technologies.
India already has many of the building blocks: ITIs, Sector Skill Councils, apprenticeships and industry-linked programmes. What is missing is a stronger and continuous feedback loop between industry and training institutions.
The path is clear: identify the industries India wants to attract, anticipate their skill requirements, redesign curricula, train workers, connect them to factories through apprenticeships, measure employment and productivity—and continuously update the system.
Without that connection between skills, industry and employment, India’s manufacturing ambitions could struggle to achieve the scale the country is targeting.
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