India stood 92nd in the latest rankings of the global talent competitiveness index. Switzerland topped the rankings, with Singapore coming second. United Kingdom was in the third position.

The report accompanying the rankings said that India’s information technology (IT) sector is already witnessing jobless growth, paralleling the recently publicised downside of the tech boom in the United States—not enough jobs.

It said that within the group of upper-middle-income countries, BRICS countries are not getting stronger. In recent years, we have witnessed a cooling off in the growth of emerging markets, and the big emerging countries are among those that had decelerated the most. Indeed, we note the relative decline in the talent competitiveness of the BRICS, especially in Brazil (81st versus 67th in 2015–16) where scores decline all round, particularly in terms of growing talent—the pool of Global Knowledge Skills (76th) is still limited compared with developed countries, even though universities in Brazil rank high in quality.

China (54th versus 48th in 2015–16) and India (92nd versus 89th in 2015–16) slip somewhat. Although China attains an impressive 4th place in the sub-pillar of Talent Impact and is solid in the Grow pillar— mainly supported by good Formal Education (23rd) and Lifelong Learning (20th), the shortage of Vocational and Technical Skills shows up clearly. India counts on a relatively solid pool of Global Knowledge Skills (66th), at least compared with other emerging markets, but the country is not able to retain, let alone attract, talent (where it ranks 104th and 114th, respectively). This is not likely to improve until India boosts performance in its Regulatory (94th) and Market (99th) Landscapes, the report added.

The report noted that Overall, a challenge for countries such as China and India is to attract talent from abroad, particularly in the context of large emigration rates of high-skilled people (with India being more at risk of brain drain despite the connection with the diasporas working in the information technology sector).

Without doubt, the improvement of India would have the greatest impact in terms of the pool of talent not only in this region but also globally.
Emerging and developing countries such as Mexico, Indonesia, and India may have to rethink their growth models and invest in upskilling the workforce, it added.

Read: Global Talent Competitiveness Index 2017 rankings