The School of Management Studies, University of Hyderabad (UoH), celebrated its foundation day and invited Mr. Manish Sabharwal, Chairman & Co- founder of Teamlease Services, to deliver the foundation Day lecture on the topic entitled Putting India to Work- Opportunities and Challenges in Employment and Education on August 11th, 2015.
Mr. Manish started off by saying Poverty is the biggest problem in this country. Problem is not only with poverty but also with the people who have obscure vision about the issues surrounding it. He said that we can demolish the poverty with Employment and to do that we need to understand what Public policy is all about.
Mr. Sabharwal, Chairman of India’s largest private sector employer, hails from Kashmir. Born to parents, who were Civil Servants, his interest in public policy roots back to his childhood based on his understanding that it is not the economy but the society as an important element. His illustrious academic background at the Mayo College in Ajmer, and his higher education at the Sriram College, New Delhi, speaks of his grounding in the Indian employment issues.. His management degree from Wharton has given him the basis for his entrepreneurial journey, where, he founded the View Group, and managed to get 2 Billion USD funding for his new company in the USA. He returned to India thereafter and sees himself as a crusader for labour reforms in India. Since its inception in 2002, the HR Consulting Company he co-founded – TeamLease has placed more than half a million people in jobs. The growth has not only been linear but also exponential in revenue and growth. The Company has 2,500 crores today and might increase up to 10,000 crores within a few years, according to him. You can do that when you understand the public policy by providing good employment. But he felt bad that our education system was messed up. People in the metro cities can speak ‘Good English’ therefore, hired at a higher salary compared to the migrants from different states from UP and Bihar” he said. These are the implications of policy decisions, which allowed English to be taught in one state, but not in another, he added.
Mr. Sarbharwal says that the crazy part is that out of one lakh kids who call us every month, we manage to hire only three percent. There’s no defect with the rest 97,000 of them. They are willing, but unfortunately not able to, thus bringing employability of graduates. If most of them had been born in a metro, they would have had a job. He says 2 things are important – choosing the parents and the educational institution. “Choose your parents wisely or parents should choose you wisely. I have chosen my parents wisely, that’s why I stand in a stupendous position and my kids choose me wisely, so are they. The institution you choose is equally important, in deciding the success of an individual, he said. Ultimately, the 3 E’s – Education, Employment, and Employability stand at the heart of the Education Policy in India. His appointment as a member of the prestigious Central Advisory Board of Education, GoI, and the various Committees of the state and Central Government, and the experience of implementing the first vocational university in Gujarat on the PPP model, gives him an opportunity to delve into the issue and offer his formula for a successful policy on education in India.
–By Ch.Sandeep Manohar, Department of Communication