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| SOURCE- UNSPLASH BY- BRANKO STANCEVIC |
A skilled Indian can contribute a great share in the GDP of his country provided he gets job opportunity. India’s formally skilled workforce is approximately 2% - which is dismally low compared to China (47%), Japan (80%) or South Korea (96%). India still holds an unemployment rate of 17.7 per cent among graduates in the country while among those having attained a diploma after graduation; it was even higher at 22.4 per cent. The government policies of PMKVY, UDAAN, SANKALP etc. have been launched but it needs to be critically examined in response to its implementation and effectiveness. While it is estimated that at least 1.70 crore will enter the workforce every year for the next 7 years; the current annual skilling capacity is inadequate to match this demand, with many initiatives un-aligned and suffering from a lack of coordination.
An Analysis: Skill Development Programmes
The policy framework governing the skill development ecosystem in India includes the Apprentices Act, 1961, the National Skill Policy and the National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF).
Apprentices Act, 1961
The main purpose of the Act is to provide practical training to technically qualified persons in various trades. The objective is promotion of new skilled manpower.
Seat Utilization under Apprentices Training Scheme:
Source: Ministry of Labour
A total of 917,682 seats were utilized over a span of 10 years by the ministry. This huge number depicts the inability of even filling the seats for providing quality skill development program for the youth. The key issues with the apprentices system in India relate to low participation of workers and employers, low rates of stipend, strict regulatory requirements for employers including penalties for non-compliance, less coverage of trades in services sector and lack of progression into higher qualifications.
The National Skill Policy
A Department of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship was created under the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports in July, 2014 and was subsequently upgraded to full-fledged ministry in November 2014. The Ministry works primarily through the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), National Skill Development Agency (NSDA), and the Directorate of Training (DT). It aims to provide an umbrella framework to all skilling activities being carried out within the country, to align them to common standards and link the skilling with demand centres. The national policy will also provide clarity and coherence on how skill development efforts across the country can be aligned within the existing institutional arrangements.
Of the 500 million targeted to be skilled under the National Skill Development Policy 2009, the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) was mandated to skill 150 million, while the Directorate General of Employment and Training (DGET), under the Ministry of Labour and Employment was to skill 100 million. Currently, over 70 skill development schemes across various sectors are being implemented by over 20 Central Ministries/Departments.
Schemes Implemented by various Ministries:
Considering the data, it is clear that though the government has initiated projects that can if implemented at its full fledge can bring great results but the reality far more rough. The rate of implementation of such schemes is below average. The government is not even able to fill seats for providing skill development program whereas lakhs of students sit for an exam which only have a vacancy of 1,000 seats.
The major problem is of coordination among different ministries as well different demographic situation of every state. There are simultaneous schemes working at both state and national level which results in wasting of resources.
Currently, about 26 million people enter the working age group every year with about 65% of them looking for jobs. As per the India Skills report 2015, only 37.22% of surveyed people were found employable - 34.26% among male and 37.88% among female. NSSO (2010) showed that only 10.1% of the labour force had received vocational training, with only 25.6% among them receiving a formal vocational training. India ranked last among 60 countries on labour productivity (World Competitiveness Yearbook, 2012). The National Skill Development Policy (2009) had set a target of skilling 500 million people by 2022, let’s hope it becomes successful in its implementation.
The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship has also distanced itself from the target of 500 m by 2020. The 2015 policy identifies the challenge more clearly: the need to skill a huge workforce of which only 4.69% is formally skilled and gives a clearer break-up – 104.62 million fresh entrants by 2022, in addition to 298.25 million existing farm and non-farm
National Skill Development Mission
The National Skill Development Mission was approved by the Union Cabinet on 01.07.2015, and officially launched by the Hon’ble Prime Minister on 15.07.2015 on the occasion of World Youth Skills Day. The main goal is to create opportunities, space and scope for the development of the talents of the Indian youth and to develop more of those sectors which have already been put under skill development for the last so many years and also to identify new sectors for skill development. The new programme aims at providing training and skill development to 500 million youth of our country by 2020, covering each and every village. Various schemes are also proposed to achieve this objective.
The targets allocated to them were very high and without regard to any sectoral requirement. Everybody was chasing numbers without providing employment to the youth or meeting sectoral industry needs.
• No evaluation was conducted of PMKVY 2015 (the first version of the scheme) to find out the outcomes of the scheme and whether it was serving the twin purpose of providing employment to youth and meeting the skill needs of the industry before launching such an ambitious scheme.
• The focus of PMKVY has been largely on the short-term skill courses, resulting in low placements. There has been an over emphasis on this scheme and hence it is seen as the answer to all skill-related issues.
• The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) have pointed out flaws in the design and operations of the NSDC and National Skill Development Fund which has resulted in falling short of skill development goals. Majority of them also could not achieve the placement targets for the trained persons.
• The Sharada Prasad Committee, held the NSDC responsible for poor implementation of the Standard Training Assessment and Reward (STAR) programme. It highlighted that only 8.5 per cent of the persons trained were able to get employment. That is what has been claimed by NSDC.
• The government report has found fault with the STAR scheme on several counts. STAR offered school dropouts financial incentives to acquire new skills, but the report said that “of those who got their results, only 24% have received certificates and less than 18% have received monetary rewards. This is despite the fact that 80% candidates reported having bank accounts and 91.3% stated they had Aadhaar numbers”.
• The Report also cites “serious conflict of interests” in the functioning of the National Skill Development Corporation.
• NSDC has not been able to discharge its responsibilities for setting up Sector Skill Councils (SSCs) owing to lots of instances of serious conflict of interest and unethical practices.
• As per its original mandate, the NSDC should be mobilizing resources for skill development from the industry, financial institutions, multilateral and bilateral external aid agencies, private equity providers and ministries and departments of the central government and states. But the committee said found that the NSDC did not follow any standard criteria for creation of SSCs which not only increased their number but created overlapping jurisdictions.
• Another concern that arose was that the targets allocated to them were very high and without regard to any sectoral requirement. Everybody was chasing numbers without providing employment to the youth or meeting sectoral industry needs.
• There have been apprehensions on how many of the 11.7 million trained in the past two years are really in jobs.
Conclusion
Though skill training in the country has improved in recent years, the absence of job linkages is only aggravating the problem of unemployment. Skill Developments starts with identifying future job prospects and segmenting it according to the need and feasibility of training candidates. The PPP model of operation of SSCs presents a great chance of bringing industry best practices in learning and development into such training modules. Private players can use technology to automate, improve and scale training and certification approach of skill-based training. By creating better linkages between the many stakeholders in the process and establishing key deliverables and a clear chain of accountability would help make such training programs more effective. Working towards increasing the accessibility of such training programs, in parallel, should also be looked at. A recently proposed move of making such training more district centric is a step towards that direction. As India aims to have one of the strongest economic growth stories in the 21st century, it becomes vital for it ensure it growing workforce is capable to handle the incoming disruptions and find suitable jobs. And a core part of this is to tackle the problem of unskilled labour in India and fix its skilling initiatives, today rather than tomorrow.
References
Following links were used
https://www.asdc.org.in/support-for-skilling
https://www.msde.gov.in/pmkvy.html
https://www.msde.gov.in/nationalskilldevelopmentcorporation.html
https://nsdcindia.org/skillcentres
http://www.rgniyd.gov.in/sites/default/files/pdfs/scheme/nyp_2014.pdf
https://www.msde.gov.in/nsqf.html
https://nsdcindia.org/sites/default/files/files/Annual-Report-NSDC-2017-18.pdf
https://skillindia.nsdcindia.org/
https://nsdcindia.org/nsdcreports
WRITTEN BY SHIKHA GAUTAM AND BUND
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