Rishikesh Patankar has more than 20 years of experience including stints at National R & D lab, top universities abroad, and Indian Navy. He holds three master degrees in Computer Science/IT and NET qualified. He manages large scale multiple projects in ICT domain. He is a trained Drone Pilot & his area of interest are in the 4thIndustrial Revolution technologies for benefit of common man.

He is working as Chief Operating Officer in CSC e-Governance Services India Limited, a SPV under Ministry of Electronics & IT looking after education, Skill Development and CSC Academy.

In the following conversation with Deepak Nanda from CSRBOX, he talks about the following:

1. CSC has been running large scale projects for the last 5-7 years in legal, financial and digital literacy. How do you approach the same and what has changed in the dissemination post COVID? Since reaching the last mile was already a challenge and now it has broadened due to disruption of offline models.

2. Although there are multiple projects in place around skilling but when it comes to the last mile even providing basic education is a major issue let alone them getting digital skills. How do you see the scenario changing and what measures are being taken for a more equitable spread of knowledge? How have you tweaked your projects to meet the skilling needs of rural India? Be it in terms of platform, assessment, language or infrastructure.

3. Which agencies or institutions, according to you, play a critical role in helping reach the hinterlands of the country where no other intervention or project has been able to reach?

4. Mobilization of masses and more importantly youth for skilling and education programs is a huge task and so is making them understand the relevance of it. Even if the content and platforms are available free of cost, yet no one wants to learn. That calls into question the inherent motivation which you also mentioned as learners resistance in an interview. How do you think we can overcome it to improve skilling outcomes?

5. Since you have been working closely with the youth as a part of your skilling initiatives, what according to you are some skills they look for and how do they align with industry expectations of skill sets?

6. What are the steps that the government is taking to ensure up-to-date skilling avenues and scale it across the country?

7. What are the future plans of CSC to engage more youth into skilling programs and what is the best way to create meaningful partnerships for the same?

Impact-Talk is a series of views and interviews of CSR heads, impact leaders and change-makers, addressing development challenges in India. If you have an impact-maker in your network, please suggest/share details at shilpi@csrbox.org