How Education can Lead India out of Economic Complexity

The increase in economic complexity shows prosperity among people. At the same time, it also points in the direction of well-paid jobs, and abundance of opportunities in healthcare, telecom, engineering sectors. This shows that even while India is a developing country, it is progressing with a better pace.

Unemployment is a result of the situation of the country's labour market. Unfortunately the poor people or the unskilled labours, do not have the privilege to afford a luxurious life and jobs with higher salaries. Therefore, they choose self-employment or farming, etc. To remove such low-productivity labour warehouses, policies are required. Civil Services Reforms, lower employee regulatory cholestrol, decentralisation of power, and several other policies can be made in order to avoid such obstacles for economic growth. Now, on the other hand, when it comes to jobs in booming sectors, like engineering, telecom,etc. they indicate our primary labour market distinction, which is shifting from farm versus non-farm employment to export production versus domestic consumption. Arthur Lewis, a noble laureate, suggested that development involved ending a gap between the "modern"sector and the "traditional" sector. Modern sector being one to use advanced technology and traditional sector being the one with lower productivity. For India to prosper economically,raising productivity of all firms and labours, irrespective of the global or domestic demand,or delivering services or manufacture.

Economists, like Ricardo Hausmann, suggested that the prosperity of a country arises from economic development and economic complexity. He said it is like a game of "scrabble;" the private sector provides the letters(more of which allow more and longer words), the government is seen to provide vowels, higher wages arise from more words(more firms competing for talents, longer words(high-productivity firms and sectors),and more vowels(effective public goods). We predict, that the economic complexity of India shall make a leap, which is popularly associated with the notion that 5 million software jobs will increase to 12 million jobs in engineering, healthcare, and telecom combine with human capital fuel of the National Education Policy to catalyse India's transition to higher growth, complexity and wages.

The human capital, plays a key role in the development of a country, but, both human capital and economic growth, play a major role in the development of a country, India always recognized the value of "human capital". The seventh five-year plan dictates that "human resources development has necessarily to be assigned a key role in any development strategy particularly in a country like India, that possesses a large population".

The points mentioned below will show the ways in which human capital and economic growth of a country is inter-dependent on each other:

1. Skilled and specialized workers can handle and use complex machines, which the un-skilled workers are unable to use. This human capital increase the use of physical capital. This increases the productivity which increases the production, thereby leading to economic growth.
2. Several new methods of production can be introduced, by innovative and creative human capital and these in-turn facilitate an increase of production and economic growth, in the form of an increased GDP.
3. A higher rate of participation of human capital and equality among them which leads to higher employment rates, as there is an increase in employment, a rise in production is also observed, also, the standard of living improves with increased income, and also the increase in job opportunities which helps in reducing the inequalities of wealth. The improvement in employment rates and reduction of income inequalities.
4. When the human capital formation works in the right direction, a positive picture of the society can be seen. All conventional and orthodox school of thoughts gets eradicated, and the rate of participation in the workforce increases  the level of production.

The major goal of this country,now, is to raise per capita GDP. The economy possess properties which can provide prosperity, for example, the domestic markets have attained critical mass, and half of all foreign direct investments since 1947 have come in the last 5 years. The research suggest that domestic demand-driven engineering, telecom and healthcare, now employ 42 million people(which is 9% of our workforce). It is expected to expand rapidly in the next five years, engineering to 38 million from 30 million, telecom to be 6 million from 4 million, and healthcare to be 9.5 million from 7.5 million, all of which would have several new roles and job profiles on offer in a variety of sub-fields.

The economic complexity of India, has suffered because of various reasons, majorly because of poor infrastructure, uneven skills and excessive regulatory cholestrol( the factory act has more than 700 jail provisions) kept manufacturing at 11% of employment. It is expected to increase upto 17% with better infrastructure, ease of doing business reforms,rising domestic demand, and better production-linked incentives, increasing the factories for phones, IT hardware products, electronics and telecom equipments, medical devices, precision parts and much more.

A large hiring was observed in the telecom sector. It arised from mobile virtual network operators, 5G, and white space spectrum, and reliable remote work set-up needs. The hiring of the network engineers was seen to be doubled. Also the situation created due to Covid-19 has forced an overdue review of health-care employment, with expansion brought forward by decades.

The clarity of whether high-wage jobs or human capital, come first has still not been achieved. But both must go on together,even Winston Churchill understood that the "empire of the future is the empire of the mind". Even the father of our nation recognized in his speech on "Nayi Taalim" in the year 1934 about human capital. Yet, our education policy- the 1948 Radhakrishnan Report, 1968 Kothari panel and 1986 New Education Policy, created excellence in a way that cannot be measured but below-average results on mass-reach, multi-disciplinarity, basic literacy, numeracy and creativity were observed.

The National Education Policy, is a revolution in preparing us for this century. The NEP gives federal structure a crucial role. States ultimately deciding the curriculam, with intentions to soften the hard lines between the subjects and co-curricular activities.The education stresses on both 'analytical' and 'creative' thinking rather than just learning for learning's sake. A holistic development is provided for children all over learning which included intellectual, social, ethical and emotional capacities.

The National Education Policy is also well-timed. At present, the workers compete on technology because India now has  a stable and ever-improving Digital platform. A wave of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Robot Automation has been observed growing rapidly. The NEP now recognizes the problems faced by the education system, that deliver and measure cognitive quantity( the capacity of the brain to learn memorize,etc) rather than the way of thinking, or learning with others.

'The Book Of Humility is the New Smart', written by Edward Hess and Katherine Ludwig, suggests that human advantage over algorithms is our ability that we have of critical-thinking, to be creative and relate with others. Humility in this book, is framed in a way that portrays humility not as self-effacement, but self-awareness vis-a-vis technology. It is an acknowledgement that no one is perfect, and can have all the answers. Which also suggests to remain open to new ideas and committing to a journey of learning throughout life.

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