Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday declared that India has the potential to become one of the largest providers of skilled workforce in the world.

Addressing the G20 Labour and Employment Ministers Meet in Indore via video conferencing, he said the world was at the threshold of some of the greatest changes in the employment sector and stressed the need to prepare responsive and effective strategies to address these rapid transitions.

In this era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the PM said technology has become and would remain the core driver for employment. He highlighted India’s capability in creating countless technology jobs during the last such technology-led transformation.

Emphasising skilling the workforce with the use of advanced technologies and processes, Modi said that skilling, re-skilling and up-skilling were the ‘mantras’ for the future workforce. He gave examples of India’s ‘Skill India Mission’ making this a reality, and ‘Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana’ which has trained more than 12.5 million of India’s youth so far. “Special focus is being laid on Industry ‘Four Point O’ sectors like Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Internet of Things, and Drones,” he added.

The PM highlighted the skills and dedication of India’s frontline health workers during Covid and said it reflected India’s culture of service and compassion. A globally mobile workforce was going to be a reality in the future.

He emphasised G20’s role in globalising the development and sharing of skills in the true sense and commended the efforts of member nations to initiate the international referencing of occupations by skills and qualifications requirements. He said that it required new models of international cooperation and coordination, and migration and mobility partnerships. He suggested sharing statistics, information and data regarding employers and workers for a start which would empower countries across the globe to formulate evidence-based policies for better skilling, workforce planning, and gainful employment.

The PM pointed out that transformative change was the evolution of new categories of workers in the gig and platform economy that has emerged as the pillar of resilience during the pandemic. He added that it offered flexible working arrangements and also complements income sources. He said that it has immense potential of generating gainful employment, especially for the youth while also becoming a transformative tool for socio economic empowerment of women.

Modi stressed the need to realise its potential and design new-age policies and interventions for these new-age workers. He suggested finding sustainable solutions to create opportunities for regular work and coming up with new models to ensure social security, health and safety. The PM threw light on India’s ‘eShram portal’ that has seen almost 280 million registrations and was being leveraged for targeted interventions for these workers. He further added that countries should adopt similar solutions as the nature of work has become transnational.

The PM pointed out that even though providing social protection to people was a key aspect of the 2030 Agenda, the current framework adopted by international organisations only accounted for benefits that were structured in certain narrow ways while several benefits provided in other forms were not covered under this framework. Modi underlined that in order to grasp the correct picture of social protection coverage in India, benefits like universal public health, food security, insurance and pension programmes must be accounted for. He suggested considering the unique economic capacities, strengths and challenges of every country as the one-size-fits-all approach was not suitable for sustainable financing of social protection.