Skilling India – Approach in the 12th Five Year Plan

- Srishti Gupta

The challenges that India faces in terms for ensuring sustainable livelihoods for its rising youth population are gigantic. While programs like MNREGA have their own utility in the nation’s context, few will argue that imparting quality skills in an inclusive manner is the surest way to deal with menace of poverty that shames our nation even after years substantial economic growth. Therefore, it is imperative that the 12th Five Year Plan should build on the foundations laid by the 11th plan and deliver the required results at the earliest. Losing more time is bound to have dire consequences.
  

 There is an aim to increase the percentage of the workforce which has received formal skills through vocational education and training from about 12.0 per cent at present to 25.0 per cent by the end of the Twelfth Plan. This would mean that about 70 million more people have to be imparted formal skills in the next five years. The obvious question is that do we have the required infrastructure? Well, the skill ecosystem in India needs considerable expansion, while simultaneously resolving the numerous ills that plague the present arrangement. Some of the most pressing ones are flagged below.

A highly fragmented regulatory regime and multiplicity of Ministries (almost 19) have stifled any scope of bringing about the much desired efficiency for years now. Accreditation and certification system, as correctly observed Coordinated Action Plan on Skill Development, needs an urgent revamp. Another pressing concern is to be able to reorient curriculum on a continuous basis to make it responsive to the industry needs, reach out to the millions of dropouts/disadvantaged and resolve the problem of unemployability of even the so called “trained”. Skill Sector Council is certainly a bold and suitable measure with a need to cover more sectors and industries.

As noted by the Planning Commission in its approach paper, disseminating information about the availability and effectiveness of training programs is crucial. The role Employment Exchanges, NCVT and the SCVTs could play is dissemination of information on the nature and quality of training particularly with respect to enrollment, institutional capacity, completion information and graduate follow-up data from all registered vocational institutions. This will enable the government and the stakeholders to see whether the system is responding to employers’ needs and devise policies accordingly. The work is ongoing on this front.

There is a palpable need for establishing flexible learning pathways integrated to schooling on one end and higher education on the other through National Vocational Education Qualification Framework (NVEQF). This would mean addressing the issues of vocationalisation of school education through creative means. Imparting soft skills alongside has become highly relevant and has global precedence. Vocational education in our country has been accorded an inferior social status and energies have to be invested to break such stereotypes and induce excellence which will also be beneficial for the economy.

The system of Industrial Training Institutes and Industrial Training Centres need significant expansion and a lease of fresh energy to skill in numbers required. Public-Private Partnerships in financing, service delivery, and provision of workspaces and training of trainers are being promoted but a robust mechanism to regularly assess them is clearly found wanting. 

The issue of Skill Development crucially depends on other issues like status of literacy at all three levels, general state of employment, state of labor markets, functioning of labour intensive sectors and industries, and appropriateness and strength of social program. Even a cursory glance on these parameters confirms the level of challenges that daunt pursuit of skill development of the nation’s workforce. Therefore, an integrated approach is a must and all departments have to join hands and support the ongoing policy efforts. Additionally, since states lie at the forefront of implementation of these policies, they must not allow federal tensions to hamper the progress of their respective Skill Development Missions.

Skill development has been accorded a very high priority during the 12th Five Year Plan by the present Government and rightly so. According to Union Labour Minister Mallikarjun Kharge the number of Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) in the country had increased two fold during the last five years with the addition of 4,000 more institutes and capacities has been increased to training 13.75 lakh persons annually to cater to the expanding workforce in the country. National Skill Development Corporation has also been actively partnering private sector players to further augment the process of skilling. Well, it is undeniable that there has been considerable progress on this front during the last Plan yet an element of rigour can be conveniently said to be missing which is something that this nation cannot afford at this point. There have been systematic efforts to involve and inspire industry but the average citizens seem to be untouched about the relevance and importance of the issue. Their involvement has been minimal or nil. Ideas like community college rooted in local ecosystem have the potential of eliciting greater participation from the community but they are still in the pipeline. Therefore, government should pay some thoughtful consideration to brace itself with more rigour while pursuing its skill development targets and also transmit this zeal to the nation’s citizenry which holds wondrous powers in democratic polity like ours.