Special Focus: Indo-German dialogue on VET expanded

As India moves rapidly towards achieving ambitious economic and social targets, skills development will be critical for ensuring success as a knowledge economy. The challenge magnifies for India due to unprecedented issues of scalability and multiple challenges in implementation. It is projected that 500 million people will require training to join India's workforce by 2022. India has seen a surge in the number of initiatives from both government and industry to tackle the massive skills challenge.

In the course of 2011, several meetings and events in Germany and India contributed to an even more profound understanding of the two countries pertaining to common cooperation purposes and intentions in the field of skills development. Various platforms like summits, conferences, trade fairs, conventions and trade missions have all served as launching sites for promising initiatives and projects.

The joint effort of many players, their eagerness to not only exchange ideas for providing vocational qualifications but also to set them in motion has reached a new and higher level. Indian and German partners have already established a number of fruitful training cooperations and seen a number of successes in this field.

The Indo-German Working Group on Vocational Education and Training, consisting of committed strategic partners, has only recently held a meeting in Germany. In the course of this event, the Indian government expressed the intention to advertise for training of master trainers in Germany with the help of iMOVE. This is a clear signal that the high quality of German training offers is internationally unique. A road map for further cooperation and the establishment of Sector Skill Councils has been drafted.

Germany can help India capitalise effectively on its demographic dividend. iMOVE will further accompany the process.