Talent and Skill will see India Shine

India’s health will be good only when when its citizens recognise their skills and talents and their ability to work and generate wealth. Skill generation and nurturing talent are often brushed away from our list of tasks. We believe it is the Government’s responsibility to identify talent and nurture it and use its skilled and unskilled labour to increase GDP, reduce poverty and keep India’s economy looking up. The truth is, India’s wealth generation depends on steps India’s citizens will take to recognise their own skills and talents, and what strategies they will employ to monetise their skills and talents in efficient ways so that they generate wealth. This will enhance the financial and economic condition of their families. Make in India is a dream that must find participation from each and every one of us to nurture our talent and skill and bring the best in us. A collective participation on skill development, talent generation is necessary today.

An experience of talent-skill-wealth

Yesterday, we were at the Khadi exhibition in Bangalore. At the entrance was a weaver weaving Khadi towels. You can try your hand at weaving a few inches of the towel and purchase one such woven towels right there.

This was an awesome opportunity to give our daughter a live education of talent, skill, efficiency, monetisation and wealth generation.

Our daughter took to the pedals of the weaving machine and wove an inch or two of the towel. When she had finished and got off the machine, I struck a conversation with the weaver to get the facts. One towel takes one and a half hours to weave. And the cost of one towel is ₹120. This means, one person will generate ₹80 per hour. If he works for 8 hours a day, then, the will earn ₹640 per day. Multiply it by 25 working days and he will earn ₹16000 per month.

India consists of a healthy workforce population

India has a healthy workforce population. However, most of the people have neither explored their talents and skills nor exploited their talent and skill to monetise it efficiently. Here is a picture of a person we saw at the exhibition who was drawing a portrait of a lion with just a ball pen. It took him 5 hours to complete this drawing.

Though he had the talent and skill, his thinking had not matured enough to monetise it. He was there selling ladies’ decoration items. How many such people exits in India? What training can they be given so that they can learn to monetise their talent and skill?

When I saw all this, a thought occurred. If India really exploited its native talent and skill, everyone can earn and no one will go hungry. Such is the capacity we have within us.

How can we help?

Indian cities thrive with technologies of several kinds. Taking the lion face for example, what we can do, is to give this man a contract to create more such drawings, buy them and print them on T-shirts, upload the drawings on portals such as shutterstock.com so that copies of the original art can get sold. In short, we can help such people with talent and skill and no technological knowhow to generate wealth.

At the exhibition, we also saw, exquisite handlooms and handicrafts that will take our breath away. These are people who have found a platform to exhibit their talent and skill and sell their work for a healthy profit.

There are literally numerous other ways to inspire the talent and skill in India\’s workforce to generate wealth from their creativity and make India a business hub of unimaginable beauty and variety.

Share your views and inputs so we can inspire each other to take this energy further to help the talented and skilled drive the change India needs.

— Mahesh Krishnamurthy