Skill Development in India

ARCHIVES

Search 16^th July 2017 http://www.newsonair.com/Main_Audio_Bulletins_Search.aspx

TOPIC: General Studies 2

• Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

Background: Every year World Youth Skills Day is celebrated all over the world to raise awareness about the issue of unemployment among youth. The United Nations General Assembly in November 2014, declared 15th July as World Youth Skills Day. The theme of 2017 is ‘Skill for All’.

Importance: Today, the statistics say that youth are almost three times more likely unemployed when compared to adults. Most of the youth are exposed to the lower quality of jobs. Hence, they require short professional and internship courses which will help them to earn their livelihood in an honourable way.

Education and Training plays a vital role to get success in the labour market. World Youth Skills Day 2017 will help the students to enhance their skills and gives them a chance to contribute their skills to the society.

Government of India initiatives

Govt. of India already started Skill India Mission on 15th July 2015 to overcome the problem of youth unemployment and youth unemployability by equipping youth with industry need specific skills.

• 100 GST training centres were inaugurated recently
• Ministry of skill development will promote apprenticeship training and increase the engagement of apprentices to 50 lakh by cumulatively by 2050.

Generating meaningful employment is now the important task of the government. Historically, in the pre-independence age, there used to be debate in the national movement itself. Most important step was ‘Wardha scheme of education’ 1937. Following Wardha conference, a committee under Dr. Zakir Hussain was appointed to formulate the scheme of the basic education, which was later called as Zakir Hussain scheme of education. Many of these schemes were tried to be implemented post-independence. But due to economic constraints, lack of administrative structure and shortness of the ministry, not much had been done.

The most important plan- Nehru mahanalobis plan also thought of creating employment. But there was too much of deterministic idea about being scientific without exposing or leading to the solution to the problem. With fewer jobs, many were left unemployed.

(Nehru-Mahanalobis Model= The objective of the economic policy in the 1950s was to raise per capita income in the country via industrialisation. This was through building machines as fast as possible as capital goods were seen as a basic input in all lines of production. But this strategy was incomplete as there was absence of a serious effort to build human capabilities via education and training.)

Present situation

There was a general understanding that there were two modes of employment- capital intensive and labour intensive. In context of India, capital intensive couldn’t be depended upon totally as such industries have less job creation.

IITs and IIMs became top priority and are now world class. But the intermediaries, the ITIs did not get the support of the government to the extent they should have.

Every month, one million people join the labour market. The large percentage is well educated. India produces one million engineers every year and only about 25% of them are employable and get reasonable employment. 75% do either ordinary job or remain unemployed for a long time. Study by Indian confederation industry says that requirement of skilled workforce by 2030 will be 30 crores in India. We are nowhere near the target. The output and the input ratio has increased by not substantially. Thus the employment exchanges queues are ever growing, thus there is a need to think in a multi-dimensional approach.

Overall picture of India- there is gap between education, employment and employability. Educated people were not getting employment because they were not skilled. Now, the present government has moved in right direction, understanding the immense nature of the problem. If nothing concrete is done in this regard, the demographic advantage will be lost.

Data– Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship has trained 1.17 crore people in 2015-17 under PM KVY. More than 6 lakh apprentices engaged by the industry under national apprenticeship programme post comprehensive reforms in apprenticeship act 1961. These figures show that things have moved though more needs to be done.

Entrepreneurship

It is not possible in the context of today’s globalisation and liberalisation and competitiveness, and compulsion to limit the fiscal deficit that government has to provide full time jobs. It can provide initiatives in education but cannot provide entire education. So PPP model is the best way to kickstart reforms in education. The government and the private have to come together to increase the workforces. The spirit of entrepreneurship needs to be extended and developed and India should become a nation of entrepreneurs.

There are some important problems

• Inequality in education is the fundamental problem in education in society,
• There is need for quality education
• Education in India being uneven, the government must address it.
• Many fraudulent institutes are coming up all the time in name providing quality education.
• Different development levels of different states has to be looked out and then create a unified model where every Indian will get benefit.

Accessibility, desirability and social alleviation of BPL families will automatically alleviate by providing meaningful education and skill government.

Conclusion

It is a beginning. There is a need to enhance skill and its scale. The technological changes have to be incorporated and then there is need train people for organised job and bring out their entrepreneurial qualities. With the ever-changing markets, the workforce has to be trained to adjust to quick change and development.

Now is the time to move ahead of lower quality of jobs, labour market inequalities, and longer and more insecure school-to-work transitions. In addition, women should be encouraged for more employment and properly-paid, and not just resort to undertake part-time jobs or work under temporary contracts.

Connecting the dots:

• Skill India is the first step towards economic empowerment. Substantiate