Leaders hail Brics CONNECT initiative

Brics countries have committed to strengthening collaboration in “forecasting skills needs” by analysing labour market trends in digital, green, care and other priority sectors, as the 11-nation grouping of major emerging market economies welcomed “Brics CONNECT”, a new platform for technical cooperation, knowledge exchange and capacity building.

The New Delhi Declaration, adopted by Brics leaders on Saturday, said member countries recognised “the transformative role of digital technologies in expanding the outreach of social protection and enhancing inclusiveness and accessibility for workers’ welfare”. It also called for exploring “innovative, nationally tailored policy approaches to increase social protection coverage to workers in the gig and platform economy”.

The declaration welcomed Brics CONNECT (Brics Cooperation Network for Capacity Building, Employability, and New Skills and Technologies), adopted on July 15 as part of the Brics labour and employment ministers’ declaration in Hyderabad. The platform will facilitate exchange of policies and technologies on jobs, skills and social security, with gig and platform workers among its areas of cooperation. Brics CONNECT is aligned with four priority areas: advancing social security, enhancing female labour force participation, cooperating on employability and skills mapping, and leveraging technology for workers’ well-being. It will complement the existing Brics Virtual Liaison Office, an online platform for cooperation and knowledge-sharing on social security.

The declaration also noted a proposal to establish capacity-building centres for Brics member states to help create a “future-ready workforce”. Countries committed for “forecasting skills needs” in various sectors and ensuring “alignment of training programmes with evolving market demands” and promoting “linkage of TVET institutions with industries.”

Experts, however, said India needs stronger systems to identify skill gaps and prepare workers for changing labour markets.

Prof Santosh Mehrotra, Research Fellow at the IZA Institute of Labour Economics, Luxembourg, and former economics professor at JNU, said India has faced “close to half a century” of neglect of skilling and vocational education, alongside inadequate school education. He said only around 4% of India’s workforce has received formal technical and vocational education and training (TVET), compared with about 80% in China.

“First, India needs to learn how to do skill-gap analysis. Secondly, it needs to work on improving skills for existing job sectors. The government should ask the National Statistical Office (NSO) of the ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MoSPI) to do a skill-gap analysis survey nationwide to establish a baseline, and then industries in various sectors can help in overcoming skill gaps,” Mehrotra said.

He said India could learn from China and Germany, where vocational education has a stronger and more aspirational position. In China, after nine years of formal schooling, students take an examination that determines whether they proceed to vocational or general secondary education.