Another Push To Skill India Programme: Central Government To Bring In A Regulator For Skills Training

After the Make In India and Startup India programme, the central government has started pushing to get a better success rate on the PM Narendra Modi’s Skill India Programme. It now plans to set up an independent regulator for monitoring the skills training progress under the Skill India Programme.

Launched in 2015, the programme aimed to train more than 400 Mn people in different skills by 2022. However, so far only 40 Mn people have been trained, wherein 25 Mn people are trained by the skill development and entrepreneurship ministry.

The central government officials are of the view that although public funding is imperative for the skills training programme, the success depends largely on private players involvement as “the government does not have the wherewithal to undertake skilling of 40 Cr youth in the given time.”

As stated by a senior government official to ET on the condition of anonymity,  “the proposed regulator will be set up at an arm’s length from the ministry through an executive order. Discussions are at an advanced stage and the ministry will issue an order in a month.”

The reports further stated that the skill development and entrepreneurship ministry will act as the administrative ministry for the regulator. This will help in further standardising the quality of skills training in India.

Skills training in India is governed by three different bodies and regulations, all three have reportedly failed to completely regulate the skilling ecosystem. Here’s why!

• the National Council for Vocational Training (NCVT): Set up in 1956, it is mainly focused on industrial training institutes, or ITIs, which are majorly facing infrastructure issues in the country
• the Apprenticeship Act, 1961: The act is too stringent and has kept stakeholders away
• the National Skills Development Authority (NSDA): Set up in 2013, it has not been able to adapt to the changing demand for skilled professionals

India’s nearly 12 Mn youth enters the country’s workforce every year, but most of them remain unemployable because of poor skill sets, which is why it’s a key thrust area for the government.

Earlier this month, the central government of India also announced to launch a data platform to aggregate skilling data from all central ministries, states and corporates.

The National Skills Data platform is being developed by the National Skills Development Corporation(NSDC) and the World Bank. With this initiative, the central government aims to ascertain the rise in the number of skilled persons in the country under the Skill India Programme.

Also, most recently, it rolled out the guidelines to standardise the usage of different media-related entities for PM Narendra Modi’s Skill India Programme.

Under the new guidelines, permission from the Skill ministry would be required for using the logo and tagline for events, publications, website, portals and electronic media, but only official pictures of the PM will have to be used across creatives with all approvals on each creative (print/social/hoarding/any other branding) to be accorded from the Prime Minister’s Office directly.

Even after three years of launch, the Skill India programme has been termed as an initiative with high targets and wasted funds. Though the central government has started pulling strings now, the time seems to be running out.