 I think that was a pretty interesting conversation by the finance secretary and a good set-up for the programs we're going to have ongoing throughout the day. So now we're going to begin three panel discussions, one before lunch, which is going to talk about skills development, and then we'll have two panels after lunch as well. The first one looking at India's concept of smart cities and how the United States can contribute to that, and then wrapping up with the final panel on Make in India. So investors looking at this Make in India campaign to see whether or not there really is a lot that can be accomplished through that. So a variety of companies that have invested, will invest, and also our good friend Jay Ponda, a member of parliament from Arissa, talking from his vantage point as well on what the Make in India campaign looks like from the state level. So it's a little intimidating to be up here because, of course, one of my own gurus from my beginning in the 1990s in doing US India, Tarun Das, is joining me on stage. I think most of you, I'm sure, have run across Tarun at some point. Dr. Ajay Kella, who is the CEO of the Wadwani Foundation, and so a very important person in my life, in my role here at CSIS, and a new person for me to meet as well, Gwen Copsie, who's vice president for international strategic partnerships at Boeing. So meeting with the Boeing team and talking about the conference, and it was interesting that this was the panel that they really had an interest in, because you think, oh, it's going to be defense sales and offsets and that kind of stuff, but actually it's a company that's very interested and keen on skills development. So it's really a treat, Gwen, to have you up here as well. So I appreciate you coming over. So let me start with Tarun Das, if I might. And I think it is three great perspectives. I mean, Tarun, with a terrific perspective, having run CII, having taken a leadership role in Ananta Center, on how we look at skills and where the gaps are, and what companies, what individuals, what governments are doing to try to fill that. So Tarun, let me lead off with you. I know we're very much interested in hearing your thoughts on this great topic. Okay, I'll just make five points, Rick, and thank you for having me here. One is the history of skills development in India, and just in a couple of lines. It was completely government for a long, long time. There was a structure of something called Industrial Training Institutes. We call them ITIs for short. And that is where skills training took place around the country. Managed by the Ministry for Labor, and private sector was not in the game, all right? If private sector was in the game, it was only doing skills training for their captive needs, for their in company needs, all right? So that's the history. When Dr. Manmohan Singh was Prime Minister, actually in that government they started worrying about this whole skills issue. And I had the privilege of chairing the first government task force on skills development, which nobody really looked at skills development as a policy, as a strategy was happening. And then someone realized that maybe things were not going right for us. We had all this demographic dividend which could be a demographic disaster. And this task force, we had private sector CEOs on it, as well as government people, came out and said, the private sector has a major role in skills development. So we need to move the ball out of the government and look at private sector's role, look at public-private partnerships, and how to take this forward in a different paradigm altogether, right? Point two, point three, the National Skills Development Corporation was then set up by the government as a public-private partnership corporation. 51% with the private sector. So control with the private sector, 49% funding from the government. And this corporation, the NSDC, which is headed by one of my former deputy, Dilip Chenoy, who right now, I mean, he could be here today, but he's with the Prime Minister in Canada. He's signing MOUs with community colleges in Canada for skills development programs to be launched in India. This has become the central agency in the country to drive skills development. But it is working essentially with the private sector, which is new to the game. So it needs a little bit of support, infrastructure, maybe funding. And it has led to in the last few years several hundred private sector companies coming into skills development. Actually as a business, it's not charity, as a business. So I wanted you to understand this evolution. And then more recently in this government, Mr. Modi has set up a ministry for skills and entrepreneurship. So he has a cabinet minister heading there, a young cabinet minister. And what he's done is every single ministry was dealing with skills for their own areas, the health ministry, the education ministry, the civil aviation ministry, and it was chaotic. You're like Anarchy, everything has been collapsed into one place. It's now coordinated and driven through the ministry of skills, working with the National Skills Development Corporation. That's the government structure. Now I want to talk about the last two points. It's about the US and India and skills development. And I know Ajay will talk about what they're doing. And Ramesh Vadvani referred to that in his opening remarks this morning. I see skills development as a huge business opportunity for US companies. So one is for companies doing business there, needing the right kind of people and training them and all of that. So that'll be the Boeing's and many other companies. But forget them. You have amazing firms here who do training work. Across the country, you've got an infrastructure of firms who train people. And if you just see websites and you see the internet, see how many firms there are. What I'm saying is you have a business opportunity in India. You don't need to take on all 500 million people. Why don't you just take on a million? You want to train a million people and make money at it? It's there. So a business opportunity in India is not only about products. This is a product of a different kind. This is a human resources capacity building product which you can provide. And the market is there. It's a 500 million plus market who we are trying to skill and train. And the National Skills Development Corporation is driving this, working with private sector companies. Your private sector companies want to come in there and make a beeline for the National Skills Development Corporation. Connect with them and find that there is a market and there is support. There's actually financing support available to help you to get into the market of human resources capacity building. So I wanted to bring this different dimension into the conversation today. The next point is, apart from the size of the market, this is going to be a continuing market. This is a long-term market. This is not going away. This is not about buying 30 aircraft or something. And then depending on after-sales service or spare parts or whatever, human beings in India are going to be trained for the next 100 years. We better start using other than aircraft for the panel here so we can get an expert. I'm looking at him and he's going to come in. But what I'm saying is that this is a continuing market forever. And because we have hundreds of millions of young people who need training, who need development, there it is. It shows you the size of the market. I'm not sure whether in the U.S. skills development is seen like that. As far as India is concerned, is it seen as a market? Is it seen as a long-term market? And then if you take what Mr. Mehrishi said just now, forget the whole of India. Take one state. In one state you have to train a million or a couple of million people. Just work with one chief minister, one state government, one focus. So one company or two companies can go in there and say, I will work with Rajasthan. They've got great labor laws. They've changed everything. They've got a great investor-friendly administration. The chief minister is very pro working with the U.S. I will go and work with them. And the National Skills Development Corporation will give me back up. So give you confidence, hand-holding, and get into the market and focus on one geographical area in India, not necessarily look at the whole of India. I feel, and this is my last point, your smaller firms who are hesitant about India because it's tough to do business there. It's complicated. But this is green field. There are no regulations. There are no regulations. You can go and the cost, the commitment of money is nothing. You don't have to build a building now until you make your millions. You don't have to invest in fixed assets. You can rent space, you can rent. So it's a low cost operation. There are margins there and smaller firms in the U.S. in the services sector who are providing training to people here can actually look at that country, look at India as a very good market. So it's a way of also getting into that market at an SME level, not necessarily just the big corporations. Thank you. Good. Great. Thank you, Taran. Well, since you wrapped up mostly looking at the private sector, I'll transition to you since as a private sector player here and how you look at the skilled development market in India. So if I can turn it over to you to follow up. Okay, sure. And I'm going to step down here and use the podium. Perfect. Yeah, great. That's a good thing. Thank you. Can you still hear me? All right. Good. Well, let's see. When we look at India, India stands today as the world's largest importer of defense equipment. Indian's government under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi, and you've heard a lot about this this morning, has realized the importance of reversing this trend with initiatives such as making India expected to provide further support to locally manufacture and assembly defense equipment. This effort is more than just an aspiration. India has both the capabilities and the government support to transform the country into a net exporter of military hardware. And as we consider India's ambitious path, we have to consider a few factors that will be important along the way. Now, first, we realize that India is a late entrant to the export-led manufacturing model that has transformed economies around the world, like China and other Southeast Asian countries. In earlier decades, India seemingly skipped from manufacturing as the economy transitioned from agricultural to services, but is quickly gaining capabilities and momentum in the manufacturing sector. Second, we have to take into account the consideration the necessary conditions to grow domestic defense manufacturing, including sound infrastructure, predictable tax policies as we talked about earlier today, pragmatic labor laws, and government incentives. And above all, however, it's the availability of the skilled manpower that is the most important enabler, because without it, India cannot sustain a competitive defense industrial base. So for aerospace and defense manufacturing, the required talent pool can be broadly classified into two areas. One is the engineering and the manufacturing and the management pool. And the second one is the frontline factory worker. For India, the talent pool and engineering and management is currently abundant in other industrial sectors and could be applied to the aerospace domain with moderate effort. The real challenge, however, is the pool of frontline factory workers. India currently does not have a large enough workforce with such skills as precision, machining, fabrication, and assembly to meet the needs of aerospace and defense companies. This shortage of talent for skilled frontline aerospace factory workers in India creates a vicious cycle of skilled capability output mismatch. The skills are in short supply, so capabilities don't grow, and as a result, the output of the Indian aerospace manufacturing sector remains stagnant. The ripple effect then takes over. A shortage of skilled workers does not attract fresh investments, which further reduces opportunities to grow skills, and it ultimately limits the significant growth in the India's aerospace and manufacturing area and defense companies. So how do we bridge this gap between what India has and what global aerospace and defense companies need? And to answer that question, we need to take a look at the progress and limitations for Indian aerospace and defense companies. Since the opening of India's defense sector in 2001, we are seeing private companies showing interest and participating in aerospace manufacturing. Unfortunately, the effects of the sector being closed to foreign investment for so long still does exist. Both public and private sector manufacturers have gaps in their aerospace manufacturing skills because Indian companies simply were not exposed to the global aerospace and defense manufacturing requirements. Now Indian companies are increasingly gathering the skills to manufacture specific work packages for major companies like Boeing and others, but those skills are specific to that project that that company is working on. That limits true skills infusion that would enable a company, an Indian company to grow and compete for more diverse and complex work in the future. Certain Indian companies have invested in their own aerospace manufacturing sales and their skills development infrastructure in the form of labs, equipment, curriculum and trainers. However, many of the emerging micro, small and medium enterprise companies simply cannot afford to make such investments. And further complicating matters is that there isn't a single agency in India that can authorize at this time an aerospace manufacturing curriculum and provide industry recognized certifications. And while some may hope that increasing the foreign direct investment limit would encourage foreign companies to help overcome the challenge, that many may not, that may not be the case, foreign companies may be reluctant to make such investments given the reality of current skill levels and the length of time it requires to scale up. So I'm going to return to that question. How do we bridge the gap between what Indian companies have and what global aerospace and defense companies need? One suggestion is to start with the policy designed to maximize the partnership between the two Indian defense offset policies. Indian offset policy can be the right tool to develop aerospace, manufacturing skills in Indian industrial base, and break the vicious cycle. The Indian defense offset policy was first published in 2005 and mandates a minimum of the foreign companies to invest 30% of the value of the products that they sell back into India. And the policy has undergone several revisions since 2005 to help further enable the development of the Indian defense industry. One of the stated objectives of the defense offset policy is to foster development of internationally competitive enterprises. They want to be able to export out of India and have a robust defense market. However, the policy does not currently encourage or prioritize the imparting of skills to Indian companies. So changes to the policy that would provide foreign companies with the necessary incentives to invest in the skill development infrastructure of the country could help bridge the gap. And as the skills development infrastructure grows from both foreign company involvement and skills development and establishment of industry recognized certification, India companies of all sizes will have an opportunity to get the necessary training and certifications. As the cycle of skill capability output is broken, foreign aerospace and defense companies will have further incentives to incorporate Indian companies into their global supply chains as capabilities go up and the risk of execution go down. All in all, this would result in what we call a win-win for all stakeholders, the government of India, certainly Indian industry, and the foreign aerospace and defense companies because we're able to add significant value to our supply chain by these very capable Indian companies. So that concludes my remarks. Great. Thanks, Ben. Thank you. Well, that's a new angle, I think, to take a look at offsets. I've heard a variety of industries talk about these dollars generated through offset requirements as plugging this hole and that hole, and sometimes it's a tenuous grasp at best to what the purpose of an offset policy is, but to actually provide the education of tools for Indian manufacturers to get up to speed I think is a pretty novel thought along those lines. So we've taken a look at what government has done, what private sector has done, and of course with the foundation it starts with a number, getting so many people into jobs rather than kind of building it up from the business side. So Ajay, can you sort of walk us through, you know, the foundation and how they approach this idea of getting people into jobs and the role that skills play in doing so? Okay. So I'll happy to do that. Good morning to everybody and it was at the break I was told that I need to be here. Romesh had a crisis with one of his companies. He runs 23 companies, so there's always a crisis, but one of them happened to be right now. And since his companies generate most of the wealth that I get to spend, I'm happy to substitute for him. So let me talk about the skill gap. Why is skill talked about globally today? So let's start at the top and then I'll talk about what is it that we at the foundation are doing as well as what are the other organizations in India that are doing on skilling. So today the skill gap is a global phenomenon. What academia is producing and what industry wants, there is a huge, huge delta. And that's reflected in what's happening. If you look at India today, even the IT industry where the Indian software engineers are rated the highest. NASCOM, which is an industry body, they did a recent study on the graduates that are coming out of Indian engineering organization and 80% of them are unemployable. So you don't have the talent that there is. So if you look at Infosys, which is one of the largest Indian IT companies, they've set up a large campus in Mysore where they pre-higher students, higher students on graduation, they put them in a one-year training program before they engage them in jobs. Also on the US side, even developed economies have a problem with the skill gap today. About three years ago when we were looking at data, and the reflection of a skill gap was really, it shows up in youth unemployment because these are students that are graduating and they are not employable. Three years ago when we looked at the US data, there were about eight, overall unemployment was somewhere around 8%, youth unemployment was 16%, and youth between 16 and 19 was close to 24%. At that time about 4 million jobs were opened in the US and 60% of the employers were complaining that they can't find the talent to fill the jobs. So I think you would have talked about that as well. So that phenomena exists today. In fact, now if you look at the data today, the unemployment rate in US has gone down to 5%, but still the youth unemployment is 3x, and the open jobs have gone up from 4 million to close to 6 million. So another reflection that it's the skill gap that is causing the issue. So about three years ago, we as a foundation said, what can we do in this area? And since we were focused in India, we started in India with the skill. It's a massive problem. India is adding about a million people a month to the workforce. So essentially every month, about a million youth are turning 18 and are entering the workforce, or they are going to colleges. So there is a massive demand. When we looked at the entire skill pyramid, we found that if you looked at an 18-year-old that's graduating 12th grade, about 9 million students graduate 12th grade in India. About 4 million go to these three-year, four-year colleges that are existing. 4.5 million students are left behind. And in this day and age, 12th grade education with a knowledge economy taking shape, 12th grade education is not enough. The new K-12 is really the new K-14. I think President Obama also recently talked about making community colleges free in the US. And India has nothing really. So there is a 12th grade and then there is college education. So in between there is a huge gap. And this is what I think the road and others had looked at the problem and set up the National Skill Development Corporation. We as a foundation are an operating foundation. Most of us have spent time in the valley. So we wanted to bring in technology innovation to scale to address this problem. So what we are doing is, so we targeted 12th graders that are not going to college. And for them in US, if you look at the similar data, 25% of US graduates go to four-year colleges. I think some of you will be shocked by that number. But the number really is only 25% of US graduates go to four-year colleges. About 46% go to community colleges, which are the two-year program. So the community college model in the US was a very good model. Just like Tarun talked about, US training industry can have an opportunity to go to India and train the 500 million youth that we are talking about, US community colleges have an opportunity to set up community colleges in the US because there is a huge gap. So we pushed that idea with the government of India at that time. It was Manmohan Singh's government. And we got good traction even there. And what has resulted in there is they have put in a legislation now where there will be recognition of skills and training. They are setting up equivalent of community colleges, which will have upward mobility into the four-year college so it's not a dead-end stream. The Indian government has now funded about 400 community colleges as a pilot and are collaborating with foreign governments. Tarun talked about Prime Minister Modi is in Canada now signing up agreement with the Canadian community colleges. So we had originated and started this with US and we are finding US community colleges not as aggressively pushing. In fact, Canada and Germany and Australia have jumped onto this bandwagon. US has not. So it's an opportunity in the US to jump onto this. Coming back to the foundation, while these colleges are getting set up, I think we cannot wait for these infrastructure to come in place. If we go back to the brick-and-mortar model of educating that large population, it will take decades, if not half a century. So we as a foundation said why don't we leverage technology to impart this? So the foundation focus has now shifted from sort of setting this mechanism in place to investing in what we call the soft infrastructure. The soft infrastructure essentially is creating pedagogy, creating learning modules. Today, how many of you, when you're stuck trying to learn something, go to YouTube and watch videos? Sure, thanks. Not bad. Exactly. So that's what we are trying to do, essentially is to transform. So the way we started this as a pilot, actually we are doing this both in the US as well as in India. Let me talk about India. India has about 1.2 billion people, as you know. Healthcare is a major issue. Nurses and nursing assistants, there is a demand for somewhere around a million nursing assistants in the next five years. You don't need a college degree for that. You can take a 12th grader, put them through a one year or an 18 month program and they can become nursing assistants earning family supporting wages. In the absence of community colleges in the industry was doing that job. So we went to the industry and said give us the content that you have. This is really not your job of training. Your job is to take care of the patients. We will work with us. We will transform your content, which is very teacher centric and non scalable and transform it into videos, animation and gaming and offer it through the cloud to everybody in the industry. So about 18 months ago we worked with one of the hospital chains. Today we are working across five big hospital chains about hundreds of hospitals that have adopted this program. Similarly on hospitality we are doing the same thing and we are now entering into an agreement with the defense industry. Defense industry needs a lot of support. All the equipment that you are importing from defense need to be maintained and managed. So we are building up those platforms. So essentially long story short the investment in skilling can sort of only happen through leveraging modern technology to address the problem at scale. And that's what we are trying to achieve. That's terrific Ajay. Thank you. We have a few minutes for questions and I want to start off. One thing that I have learned, I think most of all by getting to shadow Tarun over the years is cutting to the chase and knowing what is the flash and what is the substance. So one issue on education that I think captures a lot of attention here which we didn't talk as much about is American four-year universities. And is there a role they can play in contributing to skills and education in India? And this bill comes through and it hasn't passed yet about allowing foreign investment in universities. Is that a game changer? Is it not? Some schools don't like campuses overseas. You know what's been your experience? Do you think that there's that much of a role for American four-year universities to go there, set up, do things? Or is it going to be other models, the private sector model community colleges? Do you have a sense on that? Rick, I think we are sending about 100,000 students to American universities each year. Okay? That will only grow because the kids want to come to America to study. All right? It's not just studying in an American university in India if there was a campus then. It is the whole experience of being here, being on campus, you know. All of that, international students, et cetera, et cetera. So that's one point. I think the drive that hunger to come here to study is not going to come down. It's going to just grow and grow and grow and grow. We'll have to see your university's capacity to take more and more kids coming, depending on the size of classes and all of that. Second, what I have seen in my conversations with American universities is that they are able to set up a small center in India, but they don't have resources to go big time into setting up in India. So they need then an Indian partner or a partner who will provide funds for doing that. So private universities are happening in India now. There's one great example of the Ashoka University near Delhi, which is funded by private sector entrepreneurs. They have collaborations with individual universities and different disciplines. So in a way you're transferring the teaching and the know-how and you're getting paid for it. Again, it's like a business opportunity which is great for the university but it is not an investment by the university in terms of money going out because you need the money here and I think after the financial crash in 2008, I think a lot of universities and governments were impacted big time. So my sense is there will be different ways that universities will get involved there. A lot of it is to recruit students to come here, actually. It's a marketing office. It's a liaison come marketing office. But as Ajay mentioned community colleges are still not seeing the business opportunity in India. Today the Prime Minister's team will sign up with 16 Canadian community colleges. 16 today in Ottawa. The National Skills Development Cooperation CEO is coming here tomorrow for other meetings and he was telling me that he will sign two agreements with two community colleges in Texas and one somewhere else. But it's like more the exception than the rule. So I think we have some work to do here in opening the business opportunity to community colleges. It is a business opportunity as I said. It's not charity and all that. And people like Ajay and all who are here and the Badwani Foundation can actually be very helpful in this process. When India is not the first country on earth to take a look at aerospace and think I'm going to be the next big aerospace player talking about trying to help workers get the skills to be able to do that have you seen a country that has committed itself to really imparting the sort of education in a relatively short period of time to become competitive or is India perhaps trotting a bit of new ground if they're successful in doing this? Well I mean I think I'll just kind of focus on India with the answer to your question. So I mean our experience in India with working with the industry there and we do have quite a few industry partners that we work with is that they do have that requirement for employees to have certain skills and so what we've found and we've invested millions of dollars in India with people that are helped to develop supply chains help provide skills on program management help provide some of the technical skills on the trades etc and but we've typically done it based on where we're sourcing the work so we do it kind of company by company basis to depend upon their needs and that certainly is one way to get there but it's not the way to get there probably the fastest that you would want to get so I absolutely agree with a lot of what you two gentlemen are saying here about how you need this more broader focus and I'm going to speak specifically for aerospace and defense because you know I'm part of the Boeing company and that's what we're interested in and I think it's it's encouraging having a model that encourages companies that are in India for the long term which the Boeing company certainly is we've been involved in India for a long term certainly on the commercial side more recently on the defense side but there has to be an encouragement for us to do more broad training and development and certifications for the kind of skills that are necessary for like a whether it's a sheet metal worker an assembly a person that does assembly quality you know quality management all those kinds of things that are inherent and the certifications that you need to get for aerospace and I would say the companies that the countries that have done it well is a lot of what they do is they do encourage it through their policy and through some other offset policies as well it encourages and recognizes the importance of skills development as they look at projects that would be acceptable for for defense offset and that's something that I believe you know and I'm touching a little bit is that's one of the policy changes I think that we need to look at in the future and India's done a tremendous job at continuing to enhance their policy on defense so that it really benefits and achieves the objectives and the vision for more make in India and growing that defense industry but I don't think right now it really incentivizes companies to do a more broad reach across multiple companies who they maybe aren't even going to be working with directly but maybe their supply chain could or other competitors it doesn't currently recognize that in a way that encourages people to do it for the broader base we'll do it for the companies we're working with doing that but that's going to be a step by step approach and that won't get it you won't get done as quickly as you would like in terms of you know the vision that you have for the country to really grow their defense industry. One more question from my side and then I'll open it up for Ajay so I've seen it a number of times over the years an American organization whether it's a company or foundation comes to India and says I'm here to help even though it has strong India roots already what's the receptivity been I mean obviously you're coming only to help and what's the receptivity been at the center and state level when you say that you want to do this are they willing to open up and partner with you did it take a while like because that's one thing that turns again whether it's companies or foundations turns people off with India sometimes they don't see that responsiveness so what's been your engagement with government how's that impacted things surprisingly quite well I think but it's not Silicon Valley standards either or it's not even business standards it takes a while the mission the mission of the bureaucrats and ministers is yes it is to do good but at the end of the day also it's the word banks and chasing that so there is sometimes there is conflict but just to give an example right we started working with the Indian government only three years ago on the skill development side and one of the other initiatives we have is on entrepreneurship to give you a flavor on skills development we were able to put in this policy working there was something in the pipeline anyway but it helped put in place the vocational education skill development as recognized and upward mobility they have funded 400 colleges today we have taken our online skilling into 1000 schools around 4 states in India just last month we signed an MOU so now we at the stage where we have done 1000 schools 1000 high schools and 400 community colleges at the various state level and one of other initiative is entrepreneurship we have been doing that for 10 years the idea there is to take a college student and inspire and educate them to become entrepreneurs because we can rely on the data and build us to create companies we want our students to start creating companies and that is happening so today the foundation is doing somewhere around and working through 500 institutes in India our students are creating 1000 companies on graduation every year each of them create about 10 jobs so it's about 1000 companies creating 10 jobs is 10,000 it doesn't have an impact on a million jobs a month so we were looking at taking what we had built over 10 years on entrepreneurship over 3 years on vocational education and scale it 10x and 100x so the Ministry of Skills and Entrepreneurship as an example signed an MOU with us to take what we have developed and scale it from the 1000 colleges that exist to 50,000 colleges all they need to do is sort of come in and say okay vocational education is a requirement every school we have the soft infrastructure to deliver the content so that's an example similarly on entrepreneurship we signed an agreement to take from 500 colleges to 5000 colleges so we can increase the order of magnitude of entrepreneurs that are created all of this has happened over 3 years all of this has happened in 2 years of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Modi government the Modi government what we are getting energized and excited about is we are talking about taking from numbers from thousands to millions and the problem in India is in the millions it's not in the thousands if you can do thousands and you are only impacting a very small segment you are not solving the problem so our vision has always been addressing the problem at scale through technology we will be able to do this Ramesh earlier talked about when he met the Prime Minister in September visited in February and we met with 4 ministers and with all those 4 ministers we are now signing MOUs so things are moving a lot more rapidly than we would have expected government of India to move I think also I would also encourage working with the states because most of this implementation happens in the states so the states are far more receptive and far more eager as well while the center sets the policies and can dole out a lot of cash the implementation happens at the state level and so you eventually have to work with the states great but we got a couple of minutes before lunch and so I will open it up to the floor if anybody else has questions quite a few great we got a couple of microphones coming around so let's start on the side over here and if you could state your name and who you represent and then try to keep it relatively brief please my name is Rosemary Segero I am president of a profit company called Segero International Group and a nonprofit called Hope for Tomorrow all doing the same thing I am a USA company and I come from Africa I think we have more Indians in Africa and even my grand son is in India taking law in India looking at what you have explained I think vocational training is very very important and that's what we are trying to do with my camp in the rural areas of Africa and my organization focusing on skills training and training so looking at using agriculture products in the US and other countries around the world so what you say it is very important so how do we make this technology or collaboration working with countries like what you are doing exporting to the US exporting to India and other countries I think technical institutions vocation is very very important so how can we collaborate and work together to make this happen well I'll just say real briefly we don't have a trilateral dialogue that I think is quite so substantive yet on US India Africa but it's talked about and Africa clearly is one of the places that I think American companies, Indian companies and institutions have shared strengths and shared engagement so I think it is quite open right now and something that I think is right for discussion but really underutilized at this point so it's a terrific message obviously the foundations moving into Africa pretty soon more on the entrepreneurship side actually both so he is going to be living this so there you go there are Indian companies who are setting up skill centers in Africa people who are engaged with African business in a big way and we can connect you to some of them great up here at the front Dave Ramaswamy I'm a consultant journalist and agribusiness my question is India with one third of America's land area has more arable land and yet the Indian agriculture sector employ 65% of the population with only 13% contribution to GDP and as a result similar to the job growth rates in the last 10 years the agriculture sector has grown at only 35% so my question is given the productivity gap and consequently the nutritional gaps that exist in agriculture how do you see skill development and entrepreneurship to increase the nutritional content in India as well as create a whole bunch of new food entrepreneurs thank you food entrepreneurship interesting I'll have a crack at it I think we are going through the process of changing Indian agriculture small holdings small family situations an economic low productivity and all of that to bringing in more technology and because the next generation do not want to work on the farms they want to move to urban locations they want to get into IT or financial services so I think you will see a transformation in agriculture happening it's a slow process because they are in the rural areas but if you go into say you go to a town like Gurgaon which is just outside Delhi it's a new town township and you go into all the malls lots of malls there the shop assistant is a rural kid he has he or she has got some elementary English knowledge can operate the equipment there in terms of you know invoicing receipts and all of that and is able to deal with the customer so they are all being absorbed say into the retail sector if you go into private hospitals again in the same township you will find people have come young people have moved out from the rural sector into jobs as hospital assistants doing administrative work so there is a migration taking place and that migration is happening with training to equip them for their new jobs I am only talking about Gurgaon because I live there outside Delhi and I am familiar with it and I see it all the time we have to raise agriculture productivity but that is a different subject I think the real issue is what is happening to the people there the young people want to move out so there will be many less people dependent on agriculture as we go forward which has happened the world over nothing just happens with technology and urbanization what is all the smart cities all about it is basically a hundred new townships in India where your catchment area boys and girls from the rural areas are going to come there we are going through a silent revolution in India people migration revolution skills revolution technology revolution because you cannot deal with all the problems unless you use technology all of that I think we are heading in the right direction and there is new energy right now in India which hasn't been there for many years just to add to that I think there are a lot of questions so maybe a lot we can talk offline just about lunchtime so we will take one or two more and we will see how long let's start up at the front here the third row back coming up on the other side terrific my name is Ramesh Kapoor I am president of US India Security Council the present time my question is what is your relationship with other Indian organizations that are doing the same work one specific is American India foundation how are you partnering with them and how are you scaling with them because that organization is for over 10 years or 12 years now in doing charities in India right so we we are an operating foundation we are trying to really leverage technology to scale but simultaneously we don't do all the work ourselves and you talked about the America India foundation we have been partnering with the American India foundation for the last three years now one of our initiatives is driving mainstreaming the educated disabled into corporate jobs in India and that's where we have used America India foundation and several other NGOs that are doing skilling at a lot a lot of these organizations were skilling but they weren't integrating the disabled into the skilling process so we have worked with them to integrate the disabled and are working with them we can do this alone so I think the key partners that we envision to scale to the numbers that we are looking at are the three beneficiaries really one is the primary beneficiary on job creation skill development is the government so government partnership is key the second beneficiary is the corporates themselves the industry at the end of the day if the industry is getting well trained people that they can employ from day one they are saving on their training costs so they are actively engaged with us now sitting on the table helping define the content helping roll out the content and the third beneficiary are the students themselves and to reach them we are using a variety of partners like the America India foundation we'll take one more I see a and Marshall back there in the back Marshall Bhutan I just wanted to follow up on Dave Ramosami's question to talk about agriculture and I agree entirely with the depiction that Taran has given of what's happening in fact the rural labor force is declining labor wages in the rural sector are going up it's becoming one of the drivers of change in Indian agriculture but I wanted to I think something was lost because I think Dave was pointing to entrepreneurial opportunities on both ends of that supply chain on the agricultural side this is going to inevitably produce consolidation new forms of cultivation not aimed at sustainability but at supplying food to the cities and then along the chain transport and logistics to supply food to these increasingly mega cities and finally food production itself food processing food retailing are also awaiting a real revolution in Indian industry the double walla is going eventually to be a thing of the past and Indians already gravitating to chains mostly of western origin but increasingly of Indian origin so I think the food the whole ag to food supply chain has a tremendous opportunity and very little skill development for that purpose I think I don't know if it needs a broad agreement I think from everybody up on stage here Marshall well good, we'll hope you join me in welcoming and thanking the panel for this start of discussion here on skills clearly there's got to be a business model for this, there is already companies have to look to take advantage as Gwen mentioned countries have to look at all the resources they have at their disposal such as and the great work and especially the Indian government I think state center and state level has actually been welcoming for this which you don't always hear when we talk about India so that's I think should warm our hearts a little bit on that discussion lots happening up in Canada today so those 16 community colleges there's going to be a lot more ice hockey in India I think in the years looking ahead so right now we're going to break for lunch we've got sandwiches in the back and so to that end let me also recognize the sponsors that helped make today's program possible so Corning Prudential our good friends at Taj hotels and Tata Oracle Corporation so thanks to them the sandwiches are on them as well as the drinks after it all wraps up and then for those speakers as well we've got a lunch on the 9th floor so if you were indicated before about joining that lunch then please see our team over at the elevators we'll reconvene at 115, thank you