Dr. Darlie O. Koshy’s new book Runway to Skilled India was released on February 19, 2021, in New Delhi. This is a sequel to his much acclaimed earlier work Indian Design Edge. In the new book he makes a strong advocacy to combine India’s inherent creativity with acquired skills to move from supply driven skilling to demand driven and then innovation driven skill development to foster value creation. He evangelizes a Run (Re-skilling, up-skilling, new-skilling) strategy especially for the 356 million youth and the 450 million work-labor force across sectors with special focus on the largest employment generating sectors which include Textile-Apparel-Fashion-Lifestyle-Rata (TAFLR) especially adopting a T shaped skilling approach. The new book is intended to facilitate a focused Run strategy to confront and conquer the disruptive changes in employment patterns and requirements so as to redirect the skill development efforts by 2022 when India turns 75.
The takeaways in this book are rooted in the spirit of Atmanirbhar Bharat which Dr. Koshy believes is an overarching concept of self-esteem and self-reliance for every Indian. For this, rediscovering and repurposing India's innate creativity and traditional skills embedded in crafts, arts and design is critical and the traditional and newly emerging clusters offer the best opportunity with e-commerce opening up new markets.
