 "Illustration: Binay Sinha")
A well-recognised paradox in our country is that ours is a labour-surplus but skill-shortage economy. At the same time, we do export some skills and professional talent, thereby earning $79 billion in 2018 as foreign remittances. Therefore, skill shortages in some sectors are perhaps more a result of relatively low wages in the domestic economy. In other sectors, these would be a result of supply shortages.
It is evident from the worldwide experience of extensive public sector intervention that given the “public goods” nature of human resources development, a purely market-based skill generation system will be inevitably characterised by supply shortages.
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