Collaborate to derive benefits of Skill India initiative

Government, industry, political class at grass route levels, social organisations and beneficiaries need to work together to make a success of the Skill India campaign, says S Narayan

In two years of governance, the Prime Minister has launched several commendable initiatives in the country. One of those initiatives is ‘Skill India’ launched on July 15, 2015 which marked World Youth Skills Day. The 'Kaushal Bharat, Kushal Bharat', ie ‘Skilled India, Successful India’, initiative was brought into existence with a target to train over 40 crore people in a span of 7 years, across various fields. Under this initiative, the government launched schemes like National Skill Development Mission, National Policy for Skill Development, Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) scheme, Entrepreneurship 2015 and the Skill Loan scheme. 

Through these policies the government focuses on generating job opportunities in the country as well as reaching out to people at the bottom of the job pyramid. These people are engaged in unskilled jobs, earning low wages and are often under-paid. The government’s motive is to provide a formal training to the large population performing these unskilled jobs, skill them and make them suitable for moving up on the job pyramid. A well-designed vocational and skills training program helps them learn new skills, upgrade existing skills and find more satisfactory and fulfilling employment.

 

However, there are many challenges in this sector.

Companies do not wish to hire the entry level workers directly. They outsource the entry level staff by appointing labour contractors and staffing companies. While some of the large staffing solution providers are compliant, most of the others are not so. The workers, therefore, do not get the benefits of all the statutory entitlements. In some cases, such contractors behave like a labour mafia!

Individuals without appropriate skills find it difficult to enter the organised sector and make do with odd jobs for survival. Even those with some skills find it difficult to break through without a formal certification and do not get justice for their calibre.

Not being part of the regular work force in the organised sector, they do not have consistency of regular income. This neither gives them a security of regular income nor the confidence to make financial decisions regarding their and their family’s future. The children face the impact of such circumstances as the parents are unable to commit to funding their education and they get caught in the vicious cycle.

While we have a demographic dividend in terms of employable youth, if they are not properly skilled and gainfully employed we would have a large section of the young population, which is aspirational, disappointed with their life leading to social unrest. It, therefore, becomes imperative that the country works towards skilling and employing them.

S Narayan, founder & managing partner, Lift Academy

Collective and cooperative efforts are required to make a success of the Skill India campaign. The government, the industry, the political class at grass route levels, the social organisations and the beneficiaries need to work together to achieve what the country has set out to do.

The government is doing a lot:

• PMKVY, government’s flagship scheme aims at providing skills to 24 lakh youth who lack formal certification, such as workers in vast unorganised sector
• The government has organised special camps at 100 locations with Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan (NYKS) and a national SMS campaign is being rolled out to build awareness of the program, reaching about 40 crore youth
• PMKVY setup 1,000 centres last year, across all states and union territories in India in which 12,54,121 youth has successfully complete certified training in 146 job roles across 32 sectors
• 'Recognition of Prior Learning' (RPL) to assess and certify 10 lakh youth for the skills that they already possess
• Through the Skill Loan scheme, loans ranging from Rs 5,000 - Rs 1.5 lakh will be made available to 34 lakh youth seeking to attend skill development programmes in a span of five years
• PM Modi handed out sanction letters for the first ever Skill Loans to aspiring trainees. He also awarded Skill Cards and Skill Certificates to trainees who had completed training through the pilot phase of PMKVY, which started in May 2015. Such Skill Cards and Skill Certificates will allow trainees to share their skill identity with employers

The campaign cannot succeed with government initiatives alone. Neither can it succeed only with the passion of the social organisations. The entire spectrum of the stakeholders in this space need to have the passion and the commitment to make this initiative a success, not for their individual benefits, which they will get anyway, but for the sake of India.
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S Narayan is the founder and managing partner of Lift Academy - a training and skilling solutions provider