Challenges of Skill Development in India

India enjoys a demographic dividend where more than 60 per cent of its population is in the working age group. The youth bulge presents an opportunity for India to enhance its growth and also supply skilled manpower to the rest of the world.

According to the World Bank Report, India’s working age population will be more than the dependent population for at least three decades till 2040.

Challenges

• Insufficient Capacity: Current infrastructure facilities available in the educational institutions throughout the country are inadequate considering the huge demand for skilled labour. There are not many trained and highly skilled trainers available.
• Mobilisation: The outlook of people associated with skill development is still very traditional. The enrolment of the students for vocational education and training has become an extremely challenging task.
• Scalability: Any model to be successful needs a lot of support from different stakeholders. Since there is limited buy-in from the corporate sector, the progress of such initiatives is slow.
• Skills Mismatch: There are lot of issues related to the skills needed by the industry and the skills imparted by the educational and training institutes. There is lack of industry-faculty interaction because of which the skill sets provided by the educational and training institutes do not end up suiting the employers’ requirements.

Government Initiative

Government of India in order to boost skill ecosystem in India launched National Skill Development Mission. Key focus areas of the mission include:

• addressing the long-term and short-term skilling needs through revamp of existing institutional training framework and establishing new institutions,
• undertake sector specific skill training initiatives,
• ensure convergence of existing skill development programmes;
• leverage existing public infrastructure for skilling;
• focus on training of trainers,
• facilitate overseas employment, and promote sustainable livelihoods,
• to provide demand driven, outcome focused training aimed at achieving high placement rates,
• to upgrade and modernize all existing training institutions, like ITIs, ATIs etc. under DDG(Training) to make them more responsive to industry demand, and
• to change people’s perceptions about vocational training and make skill development aspirational with opportunities for long-term career progression.