The Chamber had invited Smt. Roshni Sen at its Managing Committee Meeting for an interaction. Skill development, a major focus area of the Government of West Bengal and The Chamber as well and this provided an opportunity to members to know from Smt. Roshni Sen, about the Government's views and its efforts in this direction and also particularly on the areas where the Chamber could make meaningful contributions towards the Government's efforts. Smt. Roshni Sen had been at the helm of a wide range of responsibilities, from urban planning to health, from disaster management to elections, from women self-help groups to public private partnership, poverty alleviation programmes and others. She worked extensively on protection of Geographical Indicators (GIs} as well as development and protection of women and children through Government programmes like ICDs, Kanyashree, Swabalamban etc. She presented the Kanyashree Scheme as one of the best practices to prevent child marriages at various national and international forums. She spoke at various forums under the World Bank, the UN, WIPO etc on women empowerment, health, e-governance, PPP and a wide range of subjects.

Smt. Sen commenced her talk stating that at the last Bengal Global Business Summit there was a separate session on MSME and Skills because the two are very intimately linked. At this session a document titled "Convergence between MSME and skills" was published. The Government had identified the MSME clusters in the State and there were more than 500 of them. Out of these over 200 were quite functional and vibrant and the job roles that are associated were also identified. The basic document was now ready and as the MSME sector was in need of trained manpower, the Department was now a one-stop shop for skilled manpower, whether it is at the lowest level or at the medium level.

Smt. Sen strongly felt that any planning for future trained manpower should be done with a futuristic view in this disruptive era. Disruptions world-wide are likely from three fronts :

i. Technology : Training modules have to keep pace with the rapid change in technology so as to ensure ready manpower availability. Speaking about technology change, she believed that when we train our people, we must always think about the need of the future as the areas in which we are providing skills may or may not be of relevance in the future.
ii. Climate change : This was being felt party but there is still little knowledge of its consequences
iii. Migration : This was also a world-wide problem. There are serious human issues associated with this.

As an example she spoke about the relatively new retail sector was dying a very slow death because of e-commerce like Amazon, Flipkart who were taking away the retail sector. She believed that we need to impart training such that the workforce could seamlessly migrate over various segments and verticals. Sound IT knowledge was of utmost importance in this respect. The manufacturing sector will need less and less manpower because of IoT, AI and Robotics and automation.

It was extremely important to identify manpower in sectors which have been victims of obsolescence and re-train them as per the needs of the future. Even the MSME industries while making investments have to keep in mind the technology of the future.

The need of the hour was also to impart training to people in such a way that they become economic assets. For this the Department of Technical Education, Training and Skill Development, Government of West Bengal, has a crucial role to play. Skill development and technical education has to be demand driven and the demand has to come from the industry people. Unfortunately, this was not happening yet. Training and skilling was mostly being carried out as per the training providers' abilities and availabilities which was actually a supply driven mode. In the process, the manpower getting trained often do not find value in the job market. A demand- driven approach towards training calls for close contact between the Government and the industry. It was here that the Chamber had a very important role to play as a mediator. Smt. Sen expressed her happiness at the Chamber's pioneering and enthusiastic role in this respect. The Chamber, she said, had been partnering with the Government and had helped the Government organize a CXO meet. During end-2018 The Chamber had also helped the Government with a job-drive.

Smt. Sen spoke at length on development of entrepreneurship in terms of future sustainability. Idea of entrepreneurship, she felt, has to be implanted into a child's mind from the schooling days. In most families except may be the families of business entrepreneurs, she observed, the parents encourage children to study, get a job, earn high salaries. Even in schools, teacher mostly say that students need study in order to get into good colleges enabling them to get good jobs and eventually earn well. Entrepreneurship comes only as a second option. This is the case only in our country. It is not so in other countries.

She spoke about the start-up policy of the Government of India and Entrepreneurship Policy of the State Government as well. Many are not aware of these. The Startup policy has very interesting schemes like "Tinkering Labs" in schools for which each school can get up to Rs.12 lakhs lump sum for the children to experiment by giving their ideas so that their thinking habits gets inculcated from their school level. In higher educational institutions there are schemes for incubation centre and there are avenues of funding too. Some of the IITs and IIMs have in fact set up these incubation labs. However, they have not been very popular. The spirit of entrepreneurship, spirit of innovation, spirit of doing something beyond the usual is not encouraged or publicized or made available.

Ms. Sen shared her experience out of a visit to a vocational college in the UK. At a tender age of 16, students are given a choice to either go for vocational training or academic courses. In every such college there is an entrepreneurship lounge where they invite people, discuss ideas and there are some questions which are put forward to every student on their ideas, their plan to commercialise, communicate and market their ideas, about their awareness on the various laws governing businesses, etc. This is the level of discussion that keeps on happening with a 16 or 18 year old child, thus giving them a fair idea on what they need to concentrate on when they start a business. Further they have formal tie-ups with industries and industry people do regularly come and try to boost the creative spirit amongst the children.

Smt. Sen spoke about the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030. After the Millennium Development Goals 2015 having ended, the Government of India is a signatory to the Sustainable Development Goals 2030. There are 17 Goals defined under this charter for building a better world and every activity we planned should be aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals. The goals include ending poverty and hunger, ensuring healthy lives, inclusive and equitable quality education and others. The last Sustainable Development Goal addresses "Partnerships". This is something, she felt, which we needed to practice as it will not be possible to sustain anything if we worked in silos. We have to partner with each other - the private sector has to partner with the public sector, within the public sector, the departments have to partner, within the departments both the vertical and horizontal levels have to partner. The youths are being given a lot of importance all over the world now especially by the United Nations. They are the producers and the consumers of the future. Unless they become economic assets and we orient all our activities according to the needs of the youth, we really cannot go forward towards sustainable development.

We also have to think about special sections of the society like the under-privileged, the disabled and the elderly. All of them have to be put under consideration because these sections can be converted into units of value and economic assets and thus add to the GDP of the country and take the country forward.

Smt. Sen concluded her talk by expressing once again that BCC&I had played a very forward looking role. The Chamber was already working with the Government with a lot of enthusiasm and many ideas have come from here. BCC&I is a Chamber comprising of individuals. She was hopeful that by partnering with BCC&I and with each member of BCC&I individually, the Government of West Bengal could productively workout a public private partnership and work towards its development.

Smt. Roshni Sen's talk was followed by a very invigorating round of interactive discussions.