Skill Development

Skill development is a process of identifying your skill gap and ensuring you develop these skills. Your skills determine your ability to execute plans and achieve your goals.

Ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship is responsible for rolling of skill development program across nation. It creates a bridge between demand and supply of skilled manforce.The Ministry aims to skill on a large scale with speed and high standards in order to achieve its vision of a ‘Skilled India’.

Skill Development: Vision 2025

“Unlock human capital to trigger a productivity dividend and bring aspirational employment and entrepreneurship pathways to all”

The objective of vision statement 2025 is:

• Enable individual economic gains and social mobility;
• Create a skills market that is learner-centric and demand-driven; and
• Facilitate aspirational employment and entrepreneurship generation, improve overall productivity for enterprises, and catalyse economic growth.

Skill Development: Importance

• According to research by the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), India is lacking trained people in various industries, including manufacturing, healthcare, and construction.
• To overcome this gap and make sure that Indian workforce is prepared to meet the demands of the economy, skill development is essential.
• According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Employment Report 2020, a change in the pattern of labour between humans and robots might result in the loss of 85 million jobs by 2025.
• 97 million new pattern of employment might be created in industries including healthcare, renewable energy, and information technology etc. People must possess the required skills and competences to perform these new roles.
• According to a recent report by the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), only 2.5% of India’s workforce has undergone formal skill training.

Skill Development: Challenges

• In India, there is 93% of the total labour force is in the unorganised sector. Thus, the major challenge of skill development initiatives is to address the needs of a vast population by providing them skills which makes them employable and enable them to secure decent work leading to improvement in the quality of life.
• Increase in the capacity of the existing system to ensure equitable access for all and at the same time maintaining their quality is a big challenge. This involves strong and effective linkages between the industry and the trainer institute with adequate provisions for constant knowledge upgrading of the trainers.
• Creating effective linkages between school education and the governmental efforts in the area of skill development also need to be reworked. Example start up programme of delhi government school.
• Other challenges include creation of institutional mechanism for research development, quality assurance, examination, certification, affiliation and accreditation.
• There have been three major challenges identified by World Ecoonomic Forum to skills development in India:
  • expanding public sector collaboration with industry and the private sector
  • creating pathways for international mobility
  • addressing women’s low participation in the labour force.

Skill Development: Government Initiatives

Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) :

• Launched in 2015 to encourage and promote skill development in the country by providing free short duration skill training and incentivizing this by providing monetary rewards to youth for skill certification.
• The overall idea is to boost both industry and employability of youths.

Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Kendras:

• Under the “Skill India Mission”, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) has initiated the establishment of state of the art, visible, aspirational model training centres in every district of India.
• These model training centres are referred to as “Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Kendra” (PMKK). PMKK provides industry-driven courses of high quality with focus on employability.

Jan Shikshan Sansthan (JSS):

• To improve the occupational skills and technical knowledge of the non/neo literates and persons having rudimentary level of education upto 8th standard and other school dropouts beyond 8th standard i.e. upto class 12th to raise their efficiency, increase productive ability and enhance their livelihood opportunities.

Pre-Departure Orientation Training (PDOT)

• PDOT program has been launched  to orient potential migrant workers with regards to language, culture, do’s and don’ts in the destination country, the emigration process and welfare measures.

Craftsmen Training Scheme (CTS)

• The Scheme being the most important in the field of Vocational Training, has been shaping craftsmen to meet the existing as well as future manpower need, through the vast network of ITIs spread over various States / Union Territories in the country.

Advanced Vocational Training Scheme (AVTS)

• Under the scheme, training in selected skill areas is being imparted through short-term modular courses of one to six weeks’ duration.
• Tailor-made courses suiting to the specific requirements of industrial establishments are also offered.

Vocational Training Programme for Women

The program offers:

• Industrial skill training under Craftsmen Training Scheme (CTS)
• Instructor skill training under Craft Instructors Training Scheme (CITS)
• Demand-driven Short-term courses
• Special programs for training the Instructors of ITIs
• Tailor-made courses as per industry’s demand

Flexi MoUs (Flexible Memorandum of Understanding or Flexi-MoU Scheme)

• The scheme allows industries to train candidates as per their skill set requirements and provides trainees with an industry environment aligned with the market demand and latest technology to undergo training.
• It is designed to cater to the needs of both industry as well as trainees. Example Maruti Suzuki India Limited, Gurugram

National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (NAPS)

NAPS was launched in August 2016 by Government of India to promote the Apprenticeship in the country by providing financial incentives, technology and advocacy support.The scheme has the following two components:

• Sharing of 25% of prescribed stipend subject to a maximum of Rs. 1500/- per month per apprentice with the employers.
• Sharing of basic training cost up to a maximum of Rs. 7,500 per apprentice.