Skill India

by

SKILL DEVELOPMENT

Introduction

  • India is passing through the phase of demographic transition which could be the biggest opportunity or the biggest concern of the country depending upon the utilization of its huge work force. India adds 12 million people to its workforce annually, but very few have any formal skill training. Today, less than four per cent of the Indian workforce is skilled, in contrast to the 42 per cent in US, 76 per cent in Germany, 80 per cent in Japan and 96 per cent in South Korea. Our workforce readiness is one of the lowest in the world and a large chunk of existing training infrastructure is irrelevant to industry needs. Without proper skills this huge youth population would be a demographic liability instead of demographic dividend, However, this could change if we reach out to more people with quality learning opportunities, revamp our existing infrastructure and execute plans more efficiently by making better use of monetary and resource support available.Skills and knowledge are the driving forces of economic growth and social development for any country. Countries with higher and better levels of skills adjust more effectively to the challenges and opportunities of world of work. India is facing several skill development issues which are hampering its’ progress & economic growth

 

Objectives of ‘Skill India’

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.

 

HIGHLIGHTS

  • Based on formal skilling data for working age population from NSSO (68th Round)2011-12, it is estimated that only 4.69% of the total workforce in India has undergone formal skill training as compared to 68% in UK, 75% in Germany, 52% in USA, 80% in Japan and 96% in South Korea.
  • India presently faces a dual challenge of paucity of highly trained workforce, as well as nonemployability of large sections of the conventionally educated youth, who possess little or no job skills.
  • According to 68th round survey of the NSSO (2011-12), about 68% of graduates, 52% of post-graduate degree holders and 51% of graduate or post-graduate diploma holders were unemployed.
  • According to a 2017 World Bank report ‘Skilling India’, more than 12 million youth in the age group 15 and 29 are expected to enter India’s workforce every year in the next two decades.
  • A 2018 World Economic Forum report ranked India at 103 (out of 130 countries) in terms of prepared of talent.
  • By 2026, 64% of the population is expected to be in the age bracket of 15 to 59 years; and 13% above the age of 60.
  • As per the Economic Survey of India 2017 report released by the OECD, over 30% of youth aged 15-29 years in India are NEETs (not in education, employment or training).
  • According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) data (figure below), number of the unemployed youth that is seeking jobs has fallen – leading to the phenomenon of voluntary unemployment (see image ‘Dwindling numbers’).

 

GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES AND INFRASTRUCTURE FOR SKILL DEVELOPMENT

  • National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (NPSDE) 2015: o It sets the target at skilling 300 million people by 2022.
  • Special focus on skill development and entrepreneurship programmes for women and Equity.
  • Institutions such as the Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) and the Industr National Skill Development Agency (NSDA) (it is set up as a Society), National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) (it is a Public Private Partnership Company – Section 25 under Companies Act 1956) and the Directorate General of Training (DGT) under the Skill India mission:
  • NSDC and Sector Skill Councils (SSCs) exist in partnership with the industry o NSDC has the mandate of designing standards for skill development o NOSs and QPs are laid down by the SSC with the participation of the industry
  • Skill Development Missions, set up by all states
  • Adoption of National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF)
  • Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY): aims to skill 2.4 million people in diverse trades within a year
  • Other schemes: SANKALP, UDAAN, STAR (Standard Training Assessment and Reward).

Issues in implementation of Skill India Mission:

 

  • 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.

 

WAY FORWARD

  • NITI Aayog’s programme ‘Sustainable Action for Transforming Human capital’ (SATH) is the much need intervention to harvest the demographic dividend
  • Establishment of National Skills University will help in addressing the false perception of society with vocational education and setting up higher standards of skill
  • Partnership with the industry experts is needed for creation of a pool of trainers and instructors
  • Technology should be exploited to expand the reach of skilling programmes and institutes
  • Mechanism to harness the Non-resident Indian (NRI) talent pool for mentorship, skill development and expertise (as recommended by Tarun Khanna-headed Expert Committee on Innovation & Entrepreneurship) are being worked upon e.g. VAJRA

Availability of Skilled Human Resources in India

Skilling the youth is the new buzzword in the government, and all the experts agree that it clearly needs a more skilled approach to implement what has been drawn up in a policy paper. It was roughly a year ago the government rejigged the UPA’s Skill India policy to announce the National Skill Development Mission with a mandate to train 300 million Indians by 2022.

The good news is the programme has been chugging along. But it requires a substantial amount of tweaking to actively push towards the goals.

The task, no doubt, is a humongous one. The government has estimated an incremental requirement of 110 million additional skilled personnel across 24 sectors, with the highest demand coming in from sectors such as retail, security, real estate, transport, beauty, health and wellness.

These numbers may sound overawing but is not surprising considering the demographic reality of the country. As much as 50 per cent of the population is below 27 years and 700 million in this age group will constitute part of the national population in 2020. That means that the task at hand cannot be taken lightly as a routine work in progress.

It was Prime Minister Narendra Modi who drew up the broad contours of the Skill Development Mission last year. Envisaging India as the “world’s human resource capital” he said that the country should ready itself to replace the diminishing workforce in other countries. This means we must ready our human resources to cater to the global market and that necessarily entails a greater stress on the quality of training imparted.

Towards that goal the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana, skill loan scheme and the national policy for skill development and entrepreneurship 2015 were launched. In all, 25 organisations including key ministries are currently involved in the daunting task of skilling youth for jobs. Their effort seems more visible in rural India dominated by youth with less educational qualifications and very few jobs going around. In urban slums, awareness about the programme is limited and the youth still seem to be looking around for skilling opportunities.

A skilling mission of this scale and magnitude is bound to have its share of teething troubles. Though there has been an effort to converge all the government projects under an umbrella, there is also need to standardise on quality, inputs and outcomes.

For that stringent standard operating procedures need to be put in place. Some organisations have them, but most do not. Till uniform standards are established, the mission may not gain the required acceleration although those associated with it are confident that the required correctives will be incorporated sooner than later.

According to experts, the mission faces many challenges. One of the major concerns has been the high drop-out rate among trained candidates — which is close to 70 per cent. It has been observed that though trained for three months, of which the last month is on-the-job orientation, and provided employment in industrial townships or metros, candidates from the hinterland tend to return home, intimidated by urban culture and expectations.

Keeping them

To reverse this trend, some steps have been taken. For instance, on April 1, the government issued Common Norms for all skilling programmes, which according to programme implementing agencies (PIAs) may help the situation to an extent, though it is too early to tell whether these are effective enough.

Under the Common Norms, PIAs are now offered an incentive up to ₹3,000 per candidate if he or she retains a job for over 12 months and ₹5,000 per candidate for progression to a salary of ₹15,000 per month. One-third of the incentive paid to the PIA goes to the candidate in addition to his or her salary.

To help candidates retain jobs, the PIAs seem to have formulated their own methods. They persuade companies to hire in batches from the same training centre to cut costs and increase support and safety of candidates. Skilled migrants are also helped with accommodation and encouraged to live together to enhance the sense of camaraderie.

I saw the PIA intervention at work when I interacted with three sales assistants in HyperCITY, a department store in Noida. The sisters Baghe — Anita and Banita — and their friend Rupali Samal all hail from Odisha’s Koraput district. They were trained at a centre in Bhubaneshwar and joined work seven months ago.

Though placed in different sections of the store, they keep common working hours, live, cook and travel together to and fro from work. They share the rent of the room where they stay and pitch in with all the domestic chores.

Every few months they send home a few thousand rupees, spending only a fraction of the over ₹7,000 they earn per month. They even mange to put aside a small sum in their bank accounts. “It is our first job and our first time here in the big city. But because we have each other, it is easier to cope,” Rupali says. From a single parent family she had to persuade her mother to allow her to go to distant Delhi.

Recently, the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana (DDU-GKY) introduced a migration support framework to address homesickness and cultural alienation. This may be a good strategy. It has envisaged migration support centres in every State that will serve as “a home away from home” for the recruits. State governments are also supported with a fund of ₹10 lakh per centre per annum.

Apart from the high dropout rate, the Skilling India initiative has another impediment. It has not been able to create a buzz about itself. Nor has it excited the industry enough for its candidates to be picked up on a priority basis.

There are still questions being asked about the quality of some of the training being imparted. To make its mark, the programme needs to not only scale up but adhere to international benchmarks and build a better skilling reputation.

 

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