New Delhi: NITI Aayog member Arvind Virmani on Tuesday urged the industry to allocate a greater share of corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds towards skilling, stressing that the private sector has a vital role in shaping skill requirements, supporting training institutions with equipment and trainers, and offering apprenticeship opportunities to the growing youth workforce.
“Government has a critical role as information provider and coordinator at every level-national, state and local while state government and NGOs have to provide funds and expertise to skill self employed and less educated,” Virmani said while addressing the conference on Jobs & Future of Work: Critical Growth Enablers organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
He said India holds a comparative advantage in both school-educated medium-skilled and college-educated high-end human capital, while regions like the EU, Europe and the USA will continue to have an edge in technology and risk capital.
Emphasising the need for high-quality primary, secondary, and technical education, Virmani said that skilling for employment remains India’s most important challenge if the country aims to achieve upper-middle-income status by 2035 and high-income status by 2050.
“Though employability improved in seven years from 47.3 in 2019 to 54.8 in 2025 as per the Global Employability Report 2025, much greater effort is needed at the vocational educational level and universities need much greater interaction with the industry to align their curriculum with industry needs,” he said, suggesting e-skilling as the way forward.
Virmani also highlighted the growing importance of human-AI collaboration, noting that “AI can be complimentary and also a substitute,” and that blended Human-AI systems can significantly improve social, personal, and government services.
BI Bureau
