The newly created ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship Compare with previous Govt.:- Then (IN UPA):- 20 different ministries handled 73 different skill development schemes. No centralized curriculum and certification. Agencies like National Skill Development Corporation, National Skill Development Agency (with Finance Ministry) and Prime Minister’s National Council on Skill Development, National Skill Development Coordination Board, and National Skill Development Corporation/Trust. Now (IN NDA):- All schemes came under one ministry. The new ministry will devise training curriculum in key sectors and issue certificates to trained personnel. All agencies came under one ministry. Its mandate: - To coordinate with 20 ministries handling 73 skill development programmes worth about Rs 6,000 crore per year. We need to coordinate with 20 different ministries to get PM Modis dream project rolling - that is our single biggest challenge. Till last year, the ministry of Agriculture and the ministry of labour and employment had skilled the maximum number of people, followed by the ministry of Rural development, ministry of Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) and the Department of higher education. The ministry of agriculture, for example, skilled about 22 lakh people in 2013-14 out of a total of 76.3 lakh people skilled during that fiscal year. The ministry of labour and employment skilled 14.8 lakh people, achieving a 105% target. Its not that the skill development programme is new, but the ministry is new; the approach is new. Ours is the umbrella ministry to coordinate with other ministries which have been carrying out our skill development schemes.” But the question that arises is whether the government will continue to fund individual ministries for skill development as it did earlier. Or, will this ministry finally get a mandate of handling all skill development work across sectors, thereby trimming work assigned to other ministries? This is challenging to handle and materialize over all skill development work to one single ministry in the near future. But we are confident that all skill development work currently being undertaken by various ministries will converge into our ministry in a phased manner. For now, the ministry is mandated to evolve an appropriate skill development framework, removal of disconnect between the demand and supply of skilled manpower through vocational and technical training, skill upgradation, building of new skills, innovative thinking...mapping of existing skill and their certification, according to Cabinet secretariat notification. Also, three key agencies — National Skill Development Corporation, National Skill Development Agency and National Skill Development Trust — which used to be attached to the department of economic affairs under the ministry of finance are now under the administrative control of our ministry. There will no longer be training for the sake of training. There will now be more focus on outcome. Also, there will be more engagement with small and medium enterprises which account for about 90% of the total workforce in the non-farm sector. The earlier governments target of training 500 million people by 2022 will be upgraded. But he is not eying a bigger number alone. We have been designing a skill development blueprint that is expected to be rolled out by March next year. Skill India has to be a uniform exercise. There has to be uniformity in this journey... On skill development, we will be answerable to the countrymen. Some ministries may continue a section of skill development work, but we will be answerable. We clearly have the talent, now we need to show the skills. PM Gives Top Priority to Skills- During the meetings with various ministries, Seth discussed the shifting of their training divisions and attached offices dealing with skills to the new ministry, along with their budget allocations. Though all these ministries have resisted the move and justified their own performance, it makes no sense having so many multiple agencies working incoherently in silos and delivering little, especially after the government has created a skill development ministry to give the issue the harmonised and effective thrust it needs. India has the largest number of young workers in the world, but just 2% of its workforce has any skills or training of some form and 12 million youth are joining the workforce every year, far faster than the pace at which jobs or training opportunities are being created. With the PM assigning top priority to skill development to prevent socio-economic unrest and cash in on Indias much vaunted demographic dividend of a large and young workforce, officials believe incumbent departments resistance to losing turf wouldnt be allowed to hold up the formation of the new ministry. With the PM having called for an India that is known for its skills instead of its scams, we may find our hand full with the task of fixing the countrys complex and archaic training architecture, soon after the Budget. In the interim Budget for 2014-15, the government has provided around Rs 22,000 crore for skill development programmes under 21 ministries and another Rs 25,000 crore for education-related expenses, including scholarships, subsidised education loans and sectoral training programmes. As per the plan, the Director-General of Employment and Training, an attached office of the labour ministry that oversees industrial training institutes, apprenticeships and other vocational training programmes, could be shifted entirely to the skill development ministry. Similarly, the technical education wing of human resource development ministry, the National Rural Livelihoods Mission, and Ajeevika programmes under the rural development ministry would be brought under our ministry. Past:- The National Skill Development Agency, set up under the finance ministry in 2013 to coordinate skill development efforts, could also be rendered redundant, said an official. You cant have an agency and a ministry doing the same thing. So the agency may be dovetailed into the ministry or scrapped altogether as it hasnt done much since it was created, he said. While the HRD ministry would retain the oversight of university and higher education, other areas such as open and distance education under its watch could see some convergence with the skill development ministry, just as condensed courses for educating women run by the ministry of women and child development. Though UPA had set an ambitious target of training 500 million Indians by 2022, the governments own manpower research think tank had debunked these numbers as highly exaggerated. For the Twelfth Five-Year Plan that ends in 2016-17, a target of training 50 million people had been set, leaving another 450 million to be trained in the Thirteenth Five-Year Plan.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Nov 2014 12:50:15 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015