How will India Train 40Cr People by 2022 under Skill Development Initiative?

In India, young people who will soon be entering the labor and manufacturing market, would constitute the largest segment of the demographic structure. In recent years India has rapidly expanded the capacity of educational institutions and enrolments but educational attainment remains low. While India has a well-institutionalized system of vocational training, it has not sufficiently prepared its youth with the skills that today’s industries require.

Thus, to speed its economic growth and take advantage of its “demographic dividend,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched four initiatives as a part of which over 40 crore people will be trained in various skills by 2022. As much as it is important to drive such initiatives, we must accept that the on-going techniques and implementations could be treacherous to track outcome oriented initiatives.

Over all, here are some of the challenges pertaining in skill development initiatives:

• Lack of common certification systems
• Lack of awareness and mentoring process due to poor mobilizations
• Lack of replicable mobilization model
• Lack of basic infrastructure, training facilities and a sense of social disapproval for women attending skill training courses
• Lack of soft skill training and its practices
• Lack of effective assessment criteria

Some of the up-gradation and changes which must be inculcated:

• Robust monitoring & evaluation mechanism to ensure successful implementation of the policy initiatives
• Unless modern technological tools like internet are used to impart vocational training, skilling cannot be scaled up in a country where millions of youths are to be covered in our diverse land scape
• Mobile based portable authentication solutions to ensure the scheduled training are delivered in all the rural, semi-rural areas and urban area
• Mechanism for on-the-field assessments of the trained candidates
• Solutions driven by scalable and portable technology for trainers and skill development intuitions to have strong hold on their trainee to avoid surprise drop out, lack of interest or social disapproval
• National as well International level Industrially approved common certification systems
• Mass awareness and counselling channels with technically advanced tool for replicable mobilization
• To formalize convenient yet effective career counselling bodies
• Formulating outcome oriented policies
• Impart mechanisms to reward the success and penalize the failures