Indian Industries have been complaining for years that they are not able to find persons with relevant quality skill for the works available with them. By law, they are required to appoint apprentices so that skill can be obtained while on the job, but they are not fulfilling their obligations and largely depending on institutions outside industries for getting skilled persons. Government is just ignoring this though it knows ‘knowledge can be obtained in institutions but skill can be obtained only on job.

Our governments have falsely been claiming that they produce millions of skilled persons to fulfil the need of the domestic and international job market. However, what government is doing is quite different from skill development. Institutions of education and training are opened and students are enrolled. Students undergo the training programmes and get certain level of knowledge depending on factors ranging from very short duration programmes to even irrelevant training for the job market. Only a few get exposure to quality relevant training. A Large number of such institutions distributes training certificates – more certificates means more money from the government – which is certainly not equivalent to having a required relevant skill for the job market. That is why over two-third of skilled persons are running from pillar to post for job without any success. Given the complexity of the scenario, the Skill India Mission, though well intentioned, lacked right perspective, right approach, and right action.

Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojna (PMKVY) is a glaring example, which set a target for training 10 million persons during 2016-20, but trained only 3.3 million, out of which only one million got jobs by the beginning of this year. Obviously it is going to fail in achieving even the physical target because enrolment could reach just a little over 3.6 million. Under this scheme, irrelevant skills were provided only to show numbers as achievement apart from the low quality of skill that did not help to get jobs for about two-thirds of the skilled persons. There are over 40 skill development programmes being implemented in the country by over 20 ministries and departments of the government of India but none of them are likely to achieve its objectives in real sense of the term. It is mainly because there is no robust coordination and monitoring mechanism in place to ensure convergence. The dismal performance of the government has resulted in gaps in the capacity and quality of training infrastructure as well as outputs, insufficient focus on workforce aspirations, lack of certification and common standards and a pointed lack of focus on the unorganized sector. Only a little improvement could be registered in the last five years.

No one can deny the importance of skilling India as soon as possible, because India has been suffering from a severe skill crisis. As per the NSSO report of 2011-12, among persons of age 15-59 years, only about 2.2 per cent reported to have received formal vocational training while only 8.6 per cent had received non-formal vocational training. With rapidly changing modes of economic activities and the new technologies coming into operation we need large scale skilling, re-skilling, and up-skilling.

When Modi came to power in 2014, Indian economy was reported to have skill shortage in almost all sectors of the economy. To deal with the situation, a new Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship was created. Several institutions were created, and several other existing ones were intentionally weakened. The National Skill Development mission was launched in 2015 with an initial target of training 500 million people, which was soon revised when officials found it impossible. The new target was set at 400 million and finally 300 million. However, the ministry later clarified that they would not be chasing any numbers and the output will depend on the demand. It was simply a dilution of the priority, though according to an official estimate 104.62 million fresh entrants to workforce need to be skilled by 2022 in addition to the 298.25 million working persons needing skill training.

It would not be out of place to mention here that 18 million people join in our workforce every year, and most of them need relevant skills. If people are to remain in jobs, they also need re-skilling or up-skilling. As per an assessment India needs to re-skill 40 per cent of its workforce which stands today at 500 million. Human resource requirement for the year 2017 officially estimated for 24 important sectors, was only a little less than 510 million which is likely to reach over 614 million by 2022. The incremental human resource requirement between 2017 and 2022 is over 103 million per year.

The BJP’s manifesto for this year’s general election had mentioned about skill development and re-skilling as the priority areas, but after Modi’s taking over the reign for the second term the much expected priority is missing. Only about 30 million youths have been skilled by now under the mission. We don’t have even sufficient number of trainers to impart relevant skills required by the various sectors of the economy, not to talk about quality trainers. The target of imparting relevant skills to 400 million people by 2022 therefore cannot be achieved. Such an attitude of the government may adversely affect our economy, productivity, and poverty alleviation programmes. (IPA Service)