K-DISC to be Pinarayi 2.0’s showpiece institution

Will drive jobs, growth by building skills of knowledge workers to suit competencies for global job market; to be developed as institution par excellence, says Isaac
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan (Photo | B P Deepu, EPS)
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan (Photo | B P Deepu, EPS)

KOCHI: If KIIFB dominated the LDF government’s development narrative in the last five years, the second term of the Pinarayi Vijayan government will see K-DISC or Kerala Development and Innovation Strategy Council emerging as the key institution, coordinating the skill building programme of the state and driving employment generation across sectors.

“K-DISC will be developed as an institution par excellence like KIIFB,” said T M Thomas Isaac, former finance minister. This is perhaps the first time that a government anywhere in the world is creating a digital platform guaranteeing the development of skills that are needed, he told TNIE in a telephonic interaction last week. This will come in handy when the work from home (WFH) concept is gaining strength across the globe. The overall objective of K-DISC is to establish a platform of platforms for handling various aspects of competency assessment, rating of competencies, matching of competencies of job seekers and employers’ requirements with available occupational profiles and work profiles and for providing support systems for empowerment and engagement of knowledge workers which may include providing social security and benching support. 

As a first step, K-DISC, through the Digital Workforce Management System (DWMS), has established a facility for registering knowledge workers having different competency profiles. Recently, K-DISC had invited expressions of interest for collaboration with the online portal of the Kerala government for “engagement and empowerment of knowledge workers”. K-DISC, officials said, is looking to establish partnerships with providers of jobs and work, working through online platforms for integration with DWMS.

Isaac said companies like Freelancer.com, an Australian freelance marketplace website that allows potential employers to post jobs, are waiting to sign an agreement with Kerala. The state has a window of one year to capitalise on the WFH concept and create jobs here, he said. “Though we have mentioned the plans for K-DISC in the last budget and reaffirmed it in our election manifesto, nobody has been able to understand the real potential of K-DISC,” he said.

Having missed the first IT revolution though Kerala had started the Technopark, Isaac reckoned there is a major fissure in the employment market now and Kerala is poised to enter it. The plan is to provide credit freely for people buying equipment and so on for setting up workstations etc.

Isaac, in an earlier interview, had said the target is to create employment in the gig economy. With the accompanying infrastructure such as the internet superhighway of K-Fon, Isaac is confident that the state could create 20 lakh new jobs in the next five years and these people will have an average monthly income of `20,000-30,000 per month.

K-DISC, along with its partners like the Kerala University of Digital Sciences, Innovation and Technology and the ICT Academy, and several other academic research and training partners, has initiated an effort to develop a platform for competency development and for matching the skills and capabilities of knowledge workers in Kerala with the job and work demands in the global market.

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