Note4students

Skill India is one of the ambitious programmes of the prime minister. Many programmes failed achieve its targets due to various reasons. It is essential to understand the shortcomings of the programmes to suggest new paradigm.so performance appraisal needs to be carried out to write answers for elimination of unemployment, elimination of extremism by empowering youth etc.

Introduction

Skill India a flagship programme of government of India has completed one year of its launching. It includes various initiatives of the government like National Skill Development Mission, National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, 2015, Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana and the Skill Loan scheme. It has aim to train impart skill to over 400 million people by 2022. The programme made some head ways in last one year, but it need to be improved to achieve desired goals. Recently government revised this mission.

Fact and Figures

Analysis

1. According to the Sharada Prasad Committee set up by the skill development ministry to review the performance of various sector skill councils.
2. Since it was a scheme where trainees were rewarded between Rs 5,000 and Rs 12,000, the government through the National Skill Development Council (NSDC) overshot its target by training 1.8 million people, and certified another 1.2 million,
3. The second phase or PMKVY 2.0 was launched the following year, with a budget of Rs 12,000 crore to skill 10 million youth by 2020.
4. Of those 10 million, 6 million were to be provided fresh training and 4 million were to be certified for the RPL programme.
5. Sharada Prasad committee observed that, no evaluation was conducted of PMKVY 2015 (the first version of the scheme) to find out the outcomes of the scheme and whether it was serving the twin purpose of providing employment to youth and meeting the skill needs of the industry before launching such an ambitious scheme
6. The committee noted that in its consultations with various stakeholders, all of them said in one voice that the targets allocated to them were very high and without regard to any sectoral requirement. Everybody was chasing numbers without providing employment to the youth or meeting sectoral industry needs.”
7. The report has pointed at apparent overlaps across formations such as the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), National Skill Development Authority (NSDA), National Skill Qualification committee (NSQC), National Council on Vocational Training (NCVT) and Directorate General of Training (DGT), and suggested that the ministry address such duplication.
8. Data shows that the NSDC, through its partners, only managed to skill around 600,000 youth till September 1, 2017, and could place only 72,858 trained youth, exhibiting a placement rate of around 12 per cent. Under PMKYV 1, the placement rate stood at 18 per cent.
9. Critics say the focus of PMKVY has been largely on the short-term skill courses, resulting in low placements.
10. The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) made a recommendation to the Union government to re-look at the design and operations of the NSDC and National Skill Development Fund to ensure achievement of skill development goals.
11. The CAG report was based on various irregularities and performance aspects of the NSDC.  “NSDC provided financial assistance to partners for meeting their agreed training targets.
12. It was observed that in the years 2010-11 to 2013-14, the percentage of partners, who had not achieved training targets were 57, 77, 83 and 68, respectively. Majority of them also could not achieve the placement targets for the trained persons,” the report had noted.
13. The Sharada Prasad Committee also held the NSDC responsible for poor implementation of the Standard Training Assessment and Reward (STAR) programme between August 2013 and September 2014.
14. Only 8.5 per cent of the persons trained were able to get employment. That is what has been claimed by NSDC. But the real ground reality will emerge only after a detailed survey of trainees trained and placed

Conclusion

1. Skill India is ambitious programme of Government of India. At present India faces a severe shortage of trained workers. Only 2.3% of India’s work force has formal skill training compared to 68% in the UK, 75% in Germany, 52% in USA, 80% in Japan and 96% in South Korea. Hence there is is an urgent need to impart skills in more efficient way. Similarly success of many initiatives like Make-in-India depends on availability of the requisite skilled manpower. Hence Skill India needs concerted attention to achieve desired goals.
2. We need to have a holistic approach to vocational education and skill development by having a defined approach for both short-term and long-term training courses to meet the objectives of the Skill India programme
3. Skill development cannot happen without developing a credible, sound, aspirational, national system, which is quality assured and internationally compatible.

Questions:

Q.) Why did skill India mission failed to achieve its targets

Q.)“We need to have a holistic approach to vocational education and skill development by having a defined approach for both short-term and long-term training courses to meet the objectives of the Skill India programme” evaluate the statement