Leaders hail Brics CONNECT initiative

Brics countries have committed to strengthening collaboration in “forecasting skills needs” by analysing labour market trends in digital, green, care and other priority sectors, as the 11-nation grouping of major emerging market economies welcomed “Brics CONNECT”, a new platform for technical cooperation, knowledge exchange and capacity building.

The New Delhi Declaration, adopted by Brics leaders on Saturday, said member countries recognised “the transformative role of digital technologies in expanding the outreach of social protection and enhancing inclusiveness and accessibility for workers’ welfare”. It also called for exploring “innovative, nationally tailored policy approaches to increase social protection coverage to workers in the gig and platform economy”.

The declaration welcomed Brics CONNECT (Brics Cooperation Network for Capacity Building, Employability, and New Skills and Technologies), adopted on July 15 as part of the Brics labour and employment ministers’ declaration in Hyderabad. The platform will facilitate exchange of policies and technologies on jobs, skills and social security, with gig and platform workers among its areas of cooperation. Brics CONNECT is aligned with four priority areas: advancing social security, enhancing female labour force participation, cooperating on employability and skills mapping, and leveraging technology for workers’ well-being. It will complement the existing Brics Virtual Liaison Office, an online platform for cooperation and knowledge-sharing on social security.

The declaration also noted a proposal to establish capacity-building centres for Brics member states to help create a “future-ready workforce”. Countries committed for “forecasting skills needs” in various sectors and ensuring “alignment of training programmes with evolving market demands” and promoting “linkage of TVET institutions with industries.”

Experts, however, said India needs stronger systems to identify skill gaps and prepare workers for changing labour markets.

Prof Santosh Mehrotra, Research Fellow at the IZA Institute of Labour Economics, Luxembourg, and former economics professor at JNU, said India has faced “close to half a century” of neglect of skilling and vocational education, alongside inadequate school education. He said only around 4% of India’s workforce has received formal technical and vocational education and training (TVET), compared with about 80% in China.

“First, India needs to learn how to do skill-gap analysis. Secondly, it needs to work on improving skills for existing job sectors. The government should ask the National Statistical Office (NSO) of the ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MoSPI) to do a skill-gap analysis survey nationwide to establish a baseline, and then industries in various sectors can help in overcoming skill gaps,” Mehrotra said.

He said India could learn from China and Germany, where vocational education has a stronger and more aspirational position. In China, after nine years of formal schooling, students take an examination that determines whether they proceed to vocational or general secondary education. About 48% of students attend vocational secondary schools in China, he said. “In Germany or in China, vocation and technical education training has an aspirational element that does not exist in India,” he said.

Dr Harshil Sharma, who holds a PhD in labour economics from JNU and has worked with state governments on skilling programmes, said the Brics commitment was welcome but needed stronger industry participation.

“Industry linkage only works when employers set assessment standards and absorb apprentices, not when they sit on advisory boards,” he said. “These commitments prepare workers for jobs that are changing, but say almost nothing about workers whose jobs disappear or the just transition of workers at mines or traditional brick kilns, or workers whose skills are becoming redundant. Anticipation is necessary, but it is not the same as adjustment.”

India already has a sector-based institutional framework for identifying emerging skills needs, with the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE), National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC)—the government-backed organisation responsible for coordinating and promoting skill development—and Sector Skill Councils (SSCs), industry-led bodies that identify sector-specific skill requirements, working on skill-gap assessments and industry requirements. The framework covers priority areas mentioned in the declaration, including digital skills through the IT-ITeS, Electronics and Telecom Sector Skill Councils, green jobs through the Skill Council for Green Jobs, and care-related skills through the Healthcare Sector Skill Council and Domestic Workers Sector Skill Council.

Brics countries also committed to protecting cross-border workers’ social-security rights, including portability of benefits, and noted plans for an “International Digital Platform” for remote employment. They reaffirmed their commitment to “formal, inclusive, responsive, digitally empowered, and future-ready” labour markets.