The Corona Virus pandemic has closed the entire world. Economic activities have been halted and for the first time in the recent past, the global business is shut- off. Truth be told we still cannot comprehend or contemplate the entire impact that this pandemic will have on the global economy. One thing we know for sure is that this pandemic has shown the strength of governments and given us a lesson that we should be dependent on others for supplies.
We are now living in a world less open!
It is now completely clear that global trade will not be the same again. Almost every nation of the world was to a certain extent dependent upon China for supplying materials and goods to their markets. Just a few months ago China was the supermarket that quenched the global hunger of goods. With the Corona pandemic, things snapped and they snapped so quickly that most of the nations could not even react.
This situation opened up to naked reality, that we have been ignoring self-sustainability for a very long time now. We are underskilled and our industries are not sufficient to meet our own domestic demands. Almost everything could be bought at cheaper prices from China. It made perfect business sense up till now. Come to present the nation is now up to a new challenge. That challenge is to become self-sustained in every sense.
What does the Future Hold For Us?
We have to change the way skills development is conducted across the nation. Soon we might see a government policy change for it too. The Corona pandemic has shown us that although we were moving in the right direction with our skill development efforts, now the situation calls for more.
A nation’s economy depends upon its industrial output and industrial output is directly linked with the quality of skills of those running it. What does that mean for skills development agencies? Well, quite frankly it is too early to say. But as of now, we can see a change on the horizon. The rate at we develop skills has to become faster. That means the skills development agencies would have to work a double shift to make things happen.
Post pandemic, when the factories open, we could even face a labour shortage issue. Most of the industrial labours are not local in origin and would they be back on time to work is another question that cannot be answered now.
Again since the industrial activities have been closed for a long time now that means the industrial entities would have to double their production outputs. This means requiring more skilled labour and manpower. We are surely going to see an explosion in skills development programs being executed. We need to repair the economy on a war footing and that’s what should be planned and executed now.
