REPORT OF THE SUB-GROUP ON TECHNICAL MANPOWER
The Ministry of Education and Social Welfare has set up the Working Group on Technical Education to review critically the present system of technical education and to make recommendations to make it internally efficient and relevant as well as to bring its resources and expertise bear upon the problems of national development. At its first meeting held on 19-11-1977, the Group decided, inter alia, to appoint a special committee to study the medium and long-term aspects of engineering and technical manpower assessment and planning. The composition of the Committee is shown in Appendix I. The Committee held its meeting on 13-12-1977* and discussed in detail the several issues of engineering manpower assessment in the context of realistic planning of technical education programmes and facilities, including the need for, and details of, institutionalising a technical manpower information system. The various suggestions and recommendations of the Committee based on these discussions are outlined in the paragraphs which follow.
* A paper prepared by Institute of Applied Manpower Research, entitled 'Educational Planning for Engineering Manpower-some issues for discussion' had been circulated for the meeting.
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I. SUMMARY OF FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 2 (i) A tentative overall quantitative assessment of engineering and technical manpower made for the next ten years indicates that the annual admission capacity at present approved by the All India Council for Technical Education, viz., 3,000 for post-graduate level courses, 25,000 for first degree courses and 50,000 for diploma level courses, is more or less adequate to meet the likely requirements upto 1987. It should be possible for the existing institutions to increase the supply of additional manpower through optimum utilisation of existing facilities, reducing the rate of drop-outs and other forms of wastage and better internal efficiency especially in diploma level courses; similarly, the requirements in the different specialities could be met by appropriate shifts in the branch-wise admission of students within the total sanctioned capacity of the existing technical institutions. The network of technical institutions already established should also be able to provide for any expansion of facilities for technical education so much so that there is no need for starting any new institutions at least for the next ten years. In addition, there is scope for, and possibility of, ensuring better utilisation of the present stock of engineering manpower by the employing sectors and agencies.
(ii) The Committee is of the view that a more realistic assess- ment of requirements should be based on the new perspectives, strategy and investment priorities which would be available when the Planning Commission publishes the new medium-term and perspective Plan document. An attempt should be made thereafter to review the above estimates of requirements of engineering manpower and to work out their details according to educational levels and branches of specialisation. The Committee further recommends that such a periodic review of manpower assessment should become a regular feature in the context of the rolling plan and be undertaken once in every year.
(iii) The Committee endorses the present system of technical education planning under the auspices of the All India Council for Technical Education which ensures a coordinated development of
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facilities and proper maintenance of standards on an all-India level. For this purpose, there should be up-to-date and meaningful manpower information available to the All India Council for Technical Education not merely to help planning facilities in the conventional engineering disciplines but also to anticipate areas of growth in the field of science and technology and promote technical manpower development in those areas.
(iv) In addition to manpower assessment at the national level, and in fact in support thereof, it is necessary to initiate such assessment at the disaggregated level of States/Territories, as well. This is so partly because of the limited inter-State mobility of certain manpower groups for education and/or for employment and partly because of the varying composition of industrial and other segments of the employment markets in the individual States/Territories. It is only such State level manpower assessment related to specific indus- tries located in States which can provide for proper identification of the type and magnitude of the manpower to be educated, trained and developed; this would also enable appropriate curriculum design and course planning at the level of the technical institutions.
(v) The usefulness of manpower assessment at the State and the national levels would depend upon the quality of primary manpower data on which these assessments are based and these have to be generated at the micro-level of units, such as the engineering departments of the Government and the establishments in the public and private industry. Some of these units have already initiated enterprise-level manpower planning for recruitment, training and career development planning; but these efforts are neither extensive nor sufficiently future- oriented. The Committee recommends that as a long-term goal, unit- level manpower planning should be promoted and supported in all establishments in the organised sector. As an immediate measure, however, all establishments should be enabled to collect and compile data on their engineering manpower to help technical education planning; this could be done within the frame work of a national technical manpower information system, which the Committee recommends to be established on a high priority basis.
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(vi) A sound information system is a pre-requisite to rational planning, especially in the field of technical education and manpower training. Such a system is at present lacking: the necessary data are not even collected, much less updated, systematised and stored suitably for retrieval as and when necessary. Such a lacuna is perceived in respect of information regarding the educational out-turn as well; here the flow of data is not timely nor is it possible from the available data to undertake cohort studies relating, among others, to productivity of the educational programmes and absorption pattern of the educated in the employment market.
(vii) The main objective of the proposed manpower information system would be to enable estimation of short-term and long-term requirements of engineering and technical manpower, viz., graduates, diploma holders and skilled craftsmen, in the different branches of specialisation for purposes of current decisions on enrolment and a review of the matching of the job requirements with education and training mix being, and to be, provided. More specifically, it would cover the following:
(a) at the level of a unit/establishment, manpower information such as the number, qualifications, experience, age, income and activities vis-a-vis job specifications; economic parameters (like output, value added and investment) and technological characteristics (like technology of production and scale of operation).
(b) at the level of a State/district, manpower information such as the number, their occupational, educational and industrial com- position, and age/income groups vis-a-vis the economic parameters (like composition of State income, Plan outlays).
(c) at the national level, information such as stock and chara- cteristics of manpower, occupational, educational and industrial profiles of manpower groups vis-a-vis economic parameter (like national income, non-agricultural output and value added).
(d) in terms of groups of engineering manpower, information on their stock, pattern of employment according to industries, occupations and income levels, age-groups, educational levels, annual additions to, and withdrawals from the stock and changing trends.
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(e) in terms of assessment techniques, information on inter- linkages and relationships between engineering manpower and varying economic, regional and technological parameters, mobility patterns, attrition rates and flow of additional manpower from known enrolment data.
(viii) In order to make the proposed information system operational, the Committee envisages effective co-ordination of efforts among the data generating and collecting agencies through a decentralised Organisation structure, such as manpower cells in the engineering units, the major departments of the State Governments and the Central Ministries; a similar cell in the Bureau of Public Enterprises for co-ordination of information from all the undertakings thereunder; at least one nodal institution, such as a Regional Engineering College, in each State for co-ordination of efforts by all concerned agencies in government, private establishment, etc., at the State level. The existing interfaces should also be strengthened between agencies like the Institute of Applied Manpower Research, Directorate-General of Employment and Training, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Central Statistical Organisation, National Sample Surveys, Ministry of Education (Technical Education Bureau) and the Planning Commission.
(ix) The Committee recommends that the Government of India should sponsor the establishment of the proposed National Manpower Information system with a lead centre in the Institute of Applied Manpower Research for the storage, updating, retrieval and analysis of technical manpower information to assist technical education planning. The Institute of Applied Manpower Research should be suitably strengthened for this purpose with the provision of a mini-computer and other facilities; a detailed project in this regard could be formulated by that Institute. Simultaneous action is also required to be taken to develop corresponding manpower centre at the State level, preferably in a well established techincal institution, as well as cells in the State Departments and Central Ministries.
(x) The manpower information system recommended by the Committee should initially start with processing of information
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relating to the organised sector, disaggregated into industry, edu- cational levels, and specialisations and States/Territories. It should also evolve methodological framework and relationships to be used in conjunction with the above data for assessing future requirements.
(xi) In regard to the unorganised sector, use should be made of sample surveys, sectoral studies and case profiles which should be undertaken by the different agencies like the Institute of Applied Manpower Research, DGE & T, Khadi and Village Industries Commission, Small Scale Industries Organisation, etc. The possibility of attaching a manpower information schedule along with the 5-yearly labour surveys of the National Sample Survey Organisation may also be explored.
(xii) In case of new emerging areas of science and technology and/or shortages in critical manpower groups, exploratory studies and opinion surveys should be undertaken by agencies like the IAMR, CSIR, Department of Science, etc.
II. GLOBAL QUANTITATIVE ASSESSMENT OF ENGINEERING MANPOWER,
1977-1987 3 It is well-known that a long lead time is required for the educational preparation of engineers and technicians. Their likely supply for the next five years is more or less pre-determined by the admission already made in the Fifth Plan. Any decision to be made or action to be taken at present would be based on an assessment of requirements for 1983 and beyond.
4 A number of global segmental and programmatic approaches are available for future manpower assessment; necessary historical data can also be disaggregated into details. But the basic problem in the use of these data has been the lack of precise information on the future plan perspectives and their employment implications. The Committee is therefore handicapped for want of any usable indication of the physical targets of development envisaged during the next 15 years or the likely pattern of investment in the different economic sectors. Nonetheless, an attempt has been made as a
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working exercise to estimate a tentative order of magnitude of re- quirements upto 1987. This is based on the following assumptions:
(i) The estimate of stock of engineering graduates and diploma holders worked out by the Institute of Applied Manpower Research is taken as the base data.
(ii) An attrition rate of 2 per cent for degree holder and 1.1 per cent for diploma holders per year has been taken to account for death, retirement and migration.
(iii) The expected out-turn in the next 3 to 5 years would be on the basis of actual admissions made with a pass percentage applied as during the last five years, speciality-wise; the intake in the future years is assumed to remain the same as in 1975.
(iv) The only methodology which can be used in the light of available information on the future economic development perspective is the one based on a relationship between the rate of growth in national income and the employment of engineers. The regression relationship on these data as worked out by a Working Group on Engineering Manpower for the Fifth Plan has been used.*
(v) The difference between the stock of manpower and the number of those unemployed, estimated on the basis of employment exchanges data with correction factors based on follow-up studies by DGE&T, etc., is assumed to constitute 'engineering manpower employment'.
(vi) The estimates of requirements relate to three rates of growth in national income, viz., 4.5 percent, 5.5 per cent and 7 per cent at 1960-61 prices, representing a low, medium and high range of values.
(vii) An attempt has been made to apportion demand estimates between degree and diploma holders on an adhoc ratio of 1: 1.5.
*Y= - 273.650590 + 3.1221x where x is national income in Rs. (100 crores) and Y is total of engineering graduates and diploma holders in thousands. 4
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5 The estimates of manpower assessment undertaken on these assumptions are given in statements in Appendices II, III and IV. These could be summarised as follows:
Engineering degree and
diploma holders (0000)
1982 1987
(i) Estimated supply 727.2 870.1
(ii) Estimated requirements low (4.5%) 642.6 875.0
Estimated requirements medium (5.5%) 698.1 1004.8
Estimated requirements higher (7.0%) 786.5 1224.3
It may be noted in this connection that the above estimates tend to overstate the requirements because of the factors inherent in the methodology regarding perfection of labour market conditions and behaviour, optimality of the present utilisation pattern, etc. In the case of supply there is a trend to underestimate especially because of the assumed pass percentage in diploma level courses, which is at present as low as less than 50; it is likely that the stress on quality improvement programmes in the Fifth Plan would result ultimately in better productivity and larger out-turn than assumed.
6 Notwithstanding the deficiencies and limitations, which are not unknown to the Committee, these estimates may be considered to provide a dimensional framework of the engineering manpower assessment vis-a- vis technical education planning at this stage. Accordingly, it is noted that the likely supply from the existing facilities would be able to meet the estimated requirements (medium estimate corresponding to a rate of growth of 5.5 per cent annually) by 1982 as well as by 1987 (low estimate corresponding to a rate of growth of 4.5 per cent annually). The conclusion which the Committee would like to draw from this is that there need be no immediate concern for any expansion of the overall capacity of the technical education system over and above that approved so far by the All India Council for Technical Education, viz., 3,000 for post-graduate
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level courses, 25,000 for degree courses and 50,000 for diploma level courses. Any additional requirements should be met by improvements in the internal efficiency and productivity of the system itself through optimum utilisation of existing facilities, reducing the rate of drop- out and other forms of wastage, etc. Similarly, the requirements in the different specialities could be met by appropriate shifts in the branchwise admission of students within the overall capacity. It is also to be noted that there is a wide network of technical institutions already established and this should provide for any expansion of facilities in the future so much so that there is no need to start any more new institutions at least for the next ten years.
7 The Committee is nevertheless of the view that the above estimates should not be taken as precise indication of the future manpower requirements not as any guideline for State-wise planning of technical education system on a long-term; estimates by their aggregate nature are not useful for that purpose. It is recommended that (a) these estimates should be reviewed in the light of the new perspectives, strategy and investment priorities which the Planning Commission is expected to outline in their new medium-term and perspective Plan document and (b) steps be taken for meaningful manpower assessment at disaggregated levels on the lines which are suggested in the subsequent paragraphs.
8 The Committee would like to endorse in passing the present system of planning of technical education under the auspices of the All India Council for Technical Education, which ensures a coordinated development and proper maintenance of standards on an all-India level. For this purpose, there should be an up-to-date and effective manpower information available to the All-India Council for Technical Education, not merely for planning facilities in the conventional branches of engineering but also to anticipate areas of growth in science and technology and promote technical manpower development in those areas.
III NEED FOR A MANPOWER INFORMATION SYSTEM 9 The present statistical system is broadly a decentralised one in which the responsibility for collection of statistics is divided
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between the Central Ministries and the State Government Departments on a subject-wise basis. Consequently, in case of some common items such as manpower, there is no single source of information available among the official data collecting agencies. The individual agencies have also different terms of references, consequent to which the types of information collected on manpower is partial from a single source. Many a time the related information required for decision making like economic data, level of employment etc., is not collected by the same agency.
10 Superimposed on the existing limitations of data collection programmes are those arising out of the limitations of manual data processing. The volume of data collected by various government agencies has been increasing at a high rate but it is neither readily available nor is in a form usable by the decision makers or researchers in the field of manpower planning. Un-coordinated data collection on related areas by different agencies has also resulted in data duplication and unanticipated data gaps. Differences in the definition of terms and terminologies, differences in standards and specification followed by different data collecting agencies, periodical changes in data collection plans etc., have made the task of comparing or collecting the data from different agencies almost im- possible. Added to this is the difficulty in acquiring the primary data which are in some cases accessible only after the publication of the reports of the concerned organisations; as these publications are released after a time lag, the data when available become out-dated. Since the data volume is large, storing the data manually makes retrieval impossible for secondary analysis and for any further detailed study.