Key Challenges To Skill Development Initiatives In India

 

Two incidents in the past couple of weeks demand attention. First, as the nation is gearing up for the general elections 2014 and politicians are actively engaged in wooing the youth of the country for a promising bright future with skill development initiatives. Second, the latest report on Global Employment Trends 2014 by International Labour Organisation (ILO) released two days ago indicates that global unemployment is up by 5 million from the previous year with major unemployment observed in East and South Asia regions wherein 45% additional job seekers are added to the market. The important question to ask at this juncture is if India is providing appropriate skills to the youth at all?

India which is touted to benefit greatly from its demographic dividend is now compelled to work out a systematic approach to employ its 600 million youth. The grim fact remains that there is a serious mismatch between the available skills sets to what is actually required by the industry. Hence, India is obligated with the task of providing skills and competencies that can make the youth competitive both within the domestic and in international labour markets. Skilled manpower is the key to development. Realising the compelling need to equip and continuously upgrade the skills of our working age population India has adopted Skill development as national priority for the next 10 years.

India’s National Policy on Skill Development (2009) aims to create empowered work force with enhanced skills, knowledge and internationally recognised qualifications to gain access to decent employment and ensure India’s competitiveness in the dynamic global market. It also aims at increasing the productivity and employability of work force apart from focus on enhanced capability to suit rapidly changing technologies and the labour market demands. However, in developing countries like India- with vast and rapidly growing population problems are two-fold- while there is paucity of the highly trained and quality labour on one hand, large sections of population have little or no employable skills. If India was to grow at a rapid pace in emerging sectors, it essentially needs personnel with special skills sets and training. The growing gap between the existing skills and knowledge has to be effectively bridged.

Eleventh Five year Plan indicated that the proportion of skilled work force has consistently and substantially comedown from existing 15.34% in 1995 to 10.57% in 2005. During the same period the proportion of unskilled workers has increased from 73.08% to 82.5%. In cognizance a road map for skill development has been laid by the 11^th five year plan by constituting National Skill Development Mission. Accordingly at the national level, a Coordinated Action on Skill Development with three-tier institutional system has been created. It includes Prime Minister’s National Council on Skill Development (PMNCSD), National Skill Development Coordination Board (NSDCB) and the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) created in 2008.

Each of these institutions has specific functions and the coordinated action of these three tiers ensured the implementation of the skill development through Central Ministries, state governments, private and public training institutions. The PMNSCD set the core principles and envisioned a mission of creating 500 million skilled people by 2022, while the NSDCB has taken up the task of coordinating the activities of the Central ministries/ departments of State and NSDC has ventured into public, private partnership that catalyses setting up of large scale for profit sustainable vocational training institutes across the country. It was also expected to fund the labour assurance, labour market information systems and train the trainer facilities.

Around 20 ministries of the central government are closely associated with skill development. They have a two pronged approach-one setting up own training capacities and providing per trainee costs of training for the specific target populations. While at State level, State Skill Development Missions (SSDM) besides coordinating with the central ministries, state line departments, industry and private training institutions has the significant task of identifying key sectors of skill development and play a pro-active role in accelerating the pace of skilling the target population. SSDM in some states are often elected by state and are under the Chief Secretary or Chief Minister while others have housed these SSDM’s under specific departments like the labour or the human resource development or planning.

However, on May 9^th 2013, the National Skill Development Agency (NSDA) was created to subsume the PMNCSD, NSCDB and office of Adviser to PM on skill development with a view to streamline the existing arrangements and to bridge the regional, social, gender and economic divide by skilling the youth especially the disadvantaged and the marginalised groups like SCs, STs, OBCs, women, differently-able persons through various skill development programs. It is also responsible now to coordinate and harmonise skill development efforts of the Government and private sector to achieve the skilling targets of 12^th five year plan and beyond, while the Central Ministries and NSDC will continue to implement the projects in their remit. In addition NSDA will anchor the National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF) and facilitate setting up of professional certifying agencies in addition to the existing ones apart from acting as nodal agency for the SSDMs. Finally, it will create and maintain national data base related to skill development including development of dynamic Labour Market Information Systems (LMIS).

On December 19^th 2013, the Cabinet committee on Skill Development approved the NSQF, a quality assurance framework which organises qualifications according to series of levels, knowledge, skills and aptitude. A nationally integrated education and competency based skill framework, NSQF will provide multiple pathways, horizontal as well as vertical, both within vocational education and vocational training thereby linking one level of learning to another higher level of learning. This will enable a person to acquire desired competency levels and transit into the job market at opportune time and return for acquiring additional skills to upgrade the competency levels. More importantly, the evolution of NSQF will discontinue India’s efforts on developing the National Vocational Qualifications Framework (NVQF) and the National Vocational & Education Qualifications Framework (NVEQF). The challenge is now to align the existing curricula and certification process to that of the standards stipulated by the NSQF.

For an effective implementation of the NSQF and to benefit from the demographic dividend, NSDA will have to dialogue with similar international frameworks for mutual recognition of qualifications, which will facilitate various categories of skilled manpower to migrate overseas without any hassle. Secondly, NSDA also has to make concerted effort to make NSQF and the regulations in built more understandable and transparent to facilitate mobility from vocational education to general education. Thirdly, while the Sector Skill Councils (SSC) already set up under the NSDC will work in collaboration with the industry to write the competency standards, the challenge is to network with various international employer and also certification agencies in the course of writing the National Occupational Standards for various occupations & sectors. Fourthly, attempts have to be made to oversee that the progression pathway is transparent so that institutes, students and employers are clear about what they can or cannot do after pursuing particular course so that the inequity and disparity in qualification can then be addressed. Above all, providing the last mile connectivity in terms of counselling and connecting the youth the job market is very crucial.

Addressing the above will help NSDA its endeavours to measure up to the global international standards and make India a source nation for trained and certified manpower. This in turn will open up avenues for Indian workers not only in domestic market but also in the overseas labour market since the training and certification will be based on the assessment by agencies whose credibility is internationally recognised. By 2022, India’s 75^th Independence Day, India would be the youngest nation with median age of 31 and nearly 25% of world’s work force will be from India in the next three years. Appropriate skilling of the youth can alone put India at a competitive advantage on the global skills pedestal.

 

 

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