Skilling India’s Youth for Better Employability: Policy Evaluation

Students being trained at ITI Gurgaon; Source: www.livemint.com

During past nine years, the idea of skilling youth has attracted attentions both nationally and internationally and there has been a continuous large scale ongoing debate on this issue even in India along with transformation. The major driving force behind such transformation is actually rooted to the persistent rise of economic aspirations of different sections of the society, especially amongst its growing youths, who are seriously exposed to the challenges unemployment and opportunities. The untiring strive for collective efforts to improve the systemic delivery of services in skill training is rather very impressive.

As per Census 2011, India has 583 million of youth population aged between 10-35 years, out of which 398 million (68%) are in rural areas. About 68% of India’s population is below the age of 35 years, increased from 60% in 2001. The dropout rate for Classes I-X in school education is about 60% in 2007-08. The dropout rates for SC and ST students are even higher at 68% and 78% respectively. As per NSS data, in the age group of 15-29 years, the proportion of persons received formal and informal vocational training is very negligible at 2% and 8% respectively. There is also a huge mismatch between skills trained and needs of the market. In fact, the issues of employability become a major concern implying that the youth lacks not just generic skills but huge technical skills which market demands. This shows that our youth are in big trouble, who are neither in school nor in training institutions for skilling. This is a big threat to the much cherished window of demographic dividend. The United Progressive Government (UPA) has taken several meaningful policy measures to arrest this trend and improve the employability of youth.

 

There has been a paradigm shift since 11^th Five Year Plan with regard to the public policies on skill development in India. An inclusive framework was devised involving subject experts, industries, civil society and international community through the Coordinated Action on Skill Development, which was created with a three tier institutional structure in 2008, including (i) Prime Minister’s National Council on Skill Development (PMNCSD) for overall policy directions, (ii) National Skill Development Coordination Board (NSDCB) under the Planning Commission for policy coordination among different stakeholders, and the (iii) National Skill Development Corporation under the Ministry of Finance in public private partnership mode to foster and catalyze the efforts of private sector involvements in skilling the youth in India.

Subsequently, the Government of India also announced the National Policy on Skill Development in 2009 with an objective to provide skill training to 500 million persons by the year 2022 when India become 75 year after Independence. This policy is the guiding document for the country as a whole and provides a very comprehensive set of innovative and radical policy measures for addressing the major challenges faced by the skill training sector in India. Besides, several measures for systemic and structural reforms, the Policy promotes greater Choice for trainees and Competition among training institutions with transparency and accountability. It also paves practical ways for skilling informal sector workers who constitute more than 94% of workforce.

Thus, both the Coordinated Action on Skill Development and the 2009 Policy played vital role for several innovative skill training schemes/programmes in the last 7-8 years initiated by both Central Ministries/Departments and State/UT governments. In fact, almost all the State/UT governments have established the State Skill Development Missions of their own with inclusive framework in order to bring necessary structural changes for improving employability of youth.

There are two major players in skilling the youth which are NSDC and Ministry of Labour & Employment. Till November 2013, the NSDC has partnered with 2,202 training institutes including mobile training centres and trained about 9.91 lakh persons, out of which they have placed 6 lakh persons (60.5%) since 2009. The Ministry of Labour through its Skill Development Initiative (SDI) Scheme based on Modular Employable Skills (MES) trained about 16 lakh persons since 2007-08.

However, in order to address the skilling issues to a greater extent by bringing systemic and structural reforms, the UPA government has set up a dedicated permanent institutional structure, namely the National Skill Development Agency (NSDA) under the Ministry of Finance by subsuming the PMNCSD and NSDCB in 2013. The NSDA is an autonomous body and aims to coordinate and harmonize the skill development efforts of the Central and State Governments and the private sector to achieve the targets of skilling youth. Moreover, the NSDA has mandate to bridge the social, regional, gender and economic divide in skilling youth through ensuring the skilling needs of the disadvantaged and marginalized groups like SCs, STs, OBCs, minorities, women and differently-abled persons. The NSDA has also been asked to take affirmative action as part of advocacy by the NSDA. The quality of training is something which the NSDA should address holistically by partnering with industry and civil society and by ensuring both supply and demand sides of the skilling youth. Such measures hopefully can help in addressing the challenges of skilling youth in India with better employability and future.
 

B.Chandrasekaran

 

UPA’s Policy Reforms in Skill Development



Photo Credit: National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC)

In the recent years the significant acceleration of economic growth rate in India has lifted quite sharply upward the demand for higher level of skilled manpower. According to B.B. Bhattacharya’s study (2008), a disaggregated analysis shows that higher education in general and skill formation in particular has given India a competitive edge in services sector’s growth.

The study also revealed that with growing demand for highly skilled work force in both India and abroad the supply of highly skilled work force in India is now failing to keep pace with demand. As a result there is a danger of India losing its international competitiveness in skill induced economic growth.

Keeping in perspective, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government initiated many policy reform processes particularly in the area of vocational training and skill development sector through Ministry of Labour & Employment. Policy reforms were introduced for expansion and modernisation of the existing vocational training institutions by partnering with industry and civil society organisations through the Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode. The government has also been implementing a number of innovative skill training programmes which have coherently created afresh vocational training facilities in the country. During 2008-09, government launched a broad based Skilling Mission for training of 500 million persons by 2022. Various Central Ministries/Departments/Organisations have been given specific targets which have been rigorously followed up through several initiatives based on the National Policy on Skill Development, 2009.

 

All the 1,896 government ITIs (January 1^st, 2007) were taken up for upgrading into Centres of Excellence. First, the upgradation of 500 ITIs was announced in the Budget 2004-05. Out of 500 ITIs, 100 ITIs were taken up from Domestic Funding and 400 ITIs were taken up through the World Bank funding. Upgradation of remaining 1,396 government ITIs was started in 2007-08 through Public Private Partnership mode. The PPP mode has been implemented in the form of Institute Management Committees (IMCs) to ensure greater and active involvement of industry in all aspects of training. There are significant improvements in the modernised ITIs both in terms of percentage of trainees pass outs and finding jobs within a year.

The other major initiative was the Skill Development Initiative (SDI) Scheme based on Modular Employable Skills (MES) launched in 2007 to provide vocational training for early school leavers and existing workers, especially in the unorganised sector to improve their employability. The scheme facilitates afresh skill training through MES as per demand of markets. It also provides scope for directly testing and certification of skills acquired informally through Empanelled Assessment Bodies. More than 7,125 Vocational Training Providers are imparting skill training under the Scheme with 1,400 short term modules covering 60 sectors. So far, more than 1.6 million persons have been trained/tested since inception of the scheme.

The National Skill Development Corporation, set up in 2009 in PPP mode have mandate of training about 150 million people or 30% of 500 million by 2022, has partnered with 2,202 skill training institute/centres across the country and trained about one million persons and placed 6 lakh persons (61%) in the job market.

 

According to the Planning Commission, as on January 1^st, 2007, there were 5,114 ITIs/ITCs in the country with a seating capacity of 7.42 lakh. As on April 1^st, 2010, there were 8,039 ITIs/ITCs with a seating capacity of 11.15 lakh in the country. Thus, the last three years (2007-08 to 2009-10) had seen an increase of 2,925 ITIs/ITCs, which is 57% of the number of institutions set up in the first 60 years of Independence! By December 11, 2013, there were 10,750 ITIs/ITCs with seating capacity of 15.23 lakh in the country.

 

There are several other institutional reform initiatives for bridging the mismatch of skilled persons and the markets needs through Labour Market Information Systems, National Skills Qualification Framework, Sector Skill Councils, National Occupation Standards, Accreditation of Institutions and Quality Assurance, Assessment and Testing Bodies, etc. All are underway in massive efforts!

 

-B.Chandrasekaran

 

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