digitalLEARNING-Apr-2010-[22-24]-Harnessing India’s Potential through Skill Development

Harnessing India’s Potential through Skill Development www.dget.nic.in

The present paper talks about Government of India’s perspective on vocational training, skill development and employment. The paper confines to skill development, leaving aside education.

Government of India realised that unless we modernise all our existing institutions, upgrade and revise the course curricula and make them industry driven, things will not move.

There are two flagship schemes under DGE&T: (i) Craftsmen Training Scheme-CTS which turns out people trained for the shop floor requirement of the country, and (ii) Apprenticeship Training Scheme –ATS, which is also trying to link training with the actual industrial environment.

Under the Craftsmen Training Scheme (CTS), there are 7605 ITIs and ITCs (Govt.-2076 & Pvt.- 5529) with a seating capacity of 10.62 lakh . ITIs are owned and run by the government and ITCs are owned and run by private sector, they could be corporates, NGOs or individuals and other different kinds of entities. There are 112 trades. Many other economies, particularly developed economies have a much larger number of trades. Australia has around 340 and Germany has 350. Training duration is 6 months to 3 years. Entry qualification is VIIIth to XIIth Standard and age from 14 to 40 years.

There is no age limit for women.

Under the Apprenticeship Training Scheme (ATS), we have 24,815 establishments which impart apprenticeship training. There are 188 trades and they altogether cover 2.79 lakhs seats while Germany as I mentioned, trains about 6.5 lacs apprentices per year. Duration of the Courses is 6 months to 4 years and entry qualification is 8-12th Standard & ITI pass-outs but in case somebody has passed ITI then that

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Sharda Prasad

So the Government took following decisions: (i) Modernize & upgrade all the existing Government ITIs. (ii) Set up large number of skill development institutions in Govt., Private and Public Private Partnerships with some kind of accreditation standards so that they deliver required quality (iii) Run all ITIs/ ITCs in 2-3 shifts, which is quite easy (iv) Introduce short term modular courses (so that we can train larger numbers in shorter time) in addition to long duration courses. We had been running longterm courses- six months, one year, two year and some even three year courses in the training institutions. Industry requires faster turnout and therefore short term courses are necessary (v) Take up training of trainers in big way. This is a huge problem, not only in India but in rest of the world also. The whole world is facing the problem of trainers.

Therefore this is one issue which has been flagged. So the broad strategy is that we train trainers in very large numbers who can meet the requirement of different sectors of economy. (vi) Achieve greater involvement of industry in skill development. Unfortunately, for historical reasons in India skill development efforts were started by government, while in some of the best economies e.g. in Germany it is all driven by the industry. Last year their total expenditure on skill development was of the order of 35 billion Euros in a country of 82 million population and it trains about 650,000 apprentices every year, Out of the expenditure of 35 billion Euros, industry contributed about 28 billion last year which is 80% and the government both federal and the landers equivalent to state governments here contributed only 20%. In India 100% expenditure is made by the governments both the centre and states. (vii) Use of Information & communication technology tools for greater outreach to remote areas. And we have already started this. We had the traditional concept of teacher taught ratio I: 20 or 1:30. Why it can’t be 1:1000, 1:10,000 or 1: Million. We just have to set up a studio, a receiving station and arrange lectures.

Any number of persons can receive lessons like this.

period is reduced from his apprenticeship training. Minimum age is 14 years and there is no upper age limit.

Up gradation of Existing ITIs Up gradation of ITIs into centres of excellence actually started quite accidentally. Government had neglected skill development sector for quite some time. ITIs were set up way back in 1950s and 60s with an objective that they would

train people to meet the requirement of the industry. And Pandit Nehru was so passionate about it. A decision was taken in 1968 by National Development Council that these institutions, being closer to the people, may be transferred to the state governments. They were transferred on April 1, 1969 lock stock and barrel to the state governments and probably that’s when the problems started. They were plan items in the central government as soon as they were transferred to the

4538 Vocational Training Providers (VTPs) have been registered and 22 Independent assessing bodies empanelled who assess the competencies of trainees so that the quality of training is not compromised.

NCVT certificate is given to successful candidates. India is the first country which has done this innovation.

National Skill Development Policy

state governments, they became non plan items.

In 2004, after the new government was, formed, Finance Minister Chidambram was holding a pre budget meeting with the captains of Industry. One of the important issues raised by them, besides other things like taxations etc., was that government was running a huge system but the quality of people produced was not up to the mark and they were not relevant to their current requirements of skills. Chidamdram announced in the first budget he presented that we would upgrade 500 ITIs into centres of excellence by investing domestic resources and would also take world Bank assistance. That’s how this scheme started. We took up the first 100 ITIs in 2005-06 at a cost of about INR 160 crores and took World Bank credit of US $280 million to upgrade 400 ITIs. The idea was not to upgrade just one time but there was some kind of paradigm shift.

Another feature of the policy was that it took in to account the fact that in another 10 or 20 years the machinery would become irrelevant as the technology is changing fast and the one time big investment would then go waste. So we thought that industry must be put in the centre of the whole skill development effort like what the rest of the world was doing. Up gradation of remaining 1396 ITIs (at that time we had 1896 ITIs) was taken up in PPP mode, in addition to 500 already taken up and Finance Minister announced in 2007 budget a commitment of about INR 3550 crores.

IMCs were converted into societies which comprised five members from

the industry, five from the government and the Principal would become the Member Secretary. They were given full academic, administrative and financial autonomy so that they became the new management and took all decisions at the local level and didn’t have to refer anything to the state government or the Directorate. Infrastructure development has already been taken up in 500 Govt.

ITIs, 100 Domestic funded and 400 World Bank assisted. In addition, Centres of Excellence (COE) for producing multi skilled workforce of world standard at a cost of INR 1741 crore (Domestic – INR 160 crore and WB INR 1581 crore) are also being created. Total number of ITIs covered under PPP is 600.

Skill Development Initiative This was also announced in 2007.

The private sector infrastructure was taken into account and tried to use that infrastructure to train people according to requirement of the industry. The initiative is demand driven with short term training courses based on Modular Employable Skills (MES). A person can do any module; he can do second module, third module, fourth and so on as per his choice and need of the industry. The cost of training is borne by Govt. of India. A Scheme has been approved to train 1 million people at a cost of INR 550 crores in 5 years.

Thereafter infrastructure so created will be used to train one million every year. 3.54 Lakh people have already been trained/ tested since inception against a target of 1.90 Lakh. 970 course curricula have been developed against a target of 200.

The National Skill Development Policy has been formulated and was approved by the Union Cabinet on February 23, 2009. In last 60 years we didn’t have any policy and it is a laudable work which has been done. With Prime Minister himself guiding the whole process we have been mandated to skill 500 million persons by 2022. The policy aims at enhancing individual employability and strengthening competitiveness of the country. It addresses the issues such as National Qualification Framework, expansion of outreach, equity & access, quality and relevance, skill development for the unorganised sector, benchmarking of skill deficit, setting up of Sector Skill Councils, etc. It is a mammoth task but by the time India completes 75 years of independence we should have adequately skilled manpower in the country if we want to reap the demographic dividend.

National Skill Development Mission Prime minister announced National Skill Development Mission on August 15, 2007 which has been put in place.

Following institutions have been created under this Mission: Prime Minister’s National Council on Skill Development: This is headed by the Prime Minister himself and he conducts its meetings. There are about 8 cabinet ministers, 6 persons from private sector.

Nandan Nilekani, Rajendra Pawar of NIIT, Professor C.K. Prahlad and many eminent people are members. They give the vision and guidelines for the

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concerned ministries to implement. India is the only country where this kind of skill development authority is headed by the prime Minister A National Skill Development Coordination Board: It is headed by Dy. Chairman Planning Commission. 17 ministries of government of India are enaged in skill development activity and a huge coordination effort is required which is being done by the Planning Commission.

National Skill Development Corporation: This is headed by M V Subbaiah from corporate sector. They have been given a resource of about INR 15000 crores to take care of skill development requirement of different sectors of economy Because ultimately the states are the implementing authorities, Chief Ministers have been requested to set up State Skill Development Missions under their Chairmanship so that skill development gets the focus by the state. 18 States have already setup such Missions.

New Schemes There are two schemes which have been formulated. One is setting up of 1500 new ITIs in PPP mode for which In- Principle approval of Planning Commission has been received. RFP has been prepared and issued to Transaction Advisors for appointment of a Consultant. Fund requirement for this project in next three years will be INR 3600 crore. We conducted a survey and found that 2868 blocks in the country had no training infrastructure. So the

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prime Minister announced that we set up 1500 ITIs in the current XIth year plan and the remaining in XIIth year plan.

Today, most of the institutions

will five five are

Introduction of following modules in all ITIs and ITCs has been made compulsory effective next year and every child, whatever discipline he chooses, will have to go through these modules: • Communication Skills, team work, interpersonal behaviour, problem solving etc.

• Basic Computer skills • Proficiency in English • Entrepreneurship Development Skills.

• Quality Management tools.

• Occupational Safety & Health located in the urban areas but about 70% of our population is in rural areas.

So, the Prime Minister took a decision

that we reach out to rural areas to set up skill development centres and give the private sector a leading role in running these institutions. It is not only training but also their employment and with the involvement of private sector, probably, the employability will improve and quality of training will also go up.

The other scheme is to establish 50,000 Skill Development Centres in PPP mode which will be smaller versions of ITIs. One centre will be set up in a cluster of 8-10 villages so that youth in that area can easily access them. These will cover the whole country and will be set up in areas which have not been covered hitherto.

At present we do not given any training in services sector which has contributed about 55-56% of GDP. Similarly, there are 94% workers in the unorganized sector but there is no organized training and skill development programme for them.

In primary sector, there are not many training centres in agriculture and different allied sectors. We are mostly addressing requirment of only the secondary sector –manufacturing and activities related to that. It has therefore been decided that SDCs will be running modular courses based on the industry requirement of primary, secondary and tertiary sectors.

In-Principle approval of Planning Commission for opening of 5000 SDCs has been given and RFP has been prepared and issued to Transaction Advisors for appointment of a Consultant. Fund requirement in the next three years will be INR 1000 crore and the government is committed to provide the money by way of viability gap funding. Our hope is that private sector will come forward in a big way. We have already started the process and may be in 10 months time we should start the roll out of these SDCs so that the country has the required institutions to turn out the numbers which are required for harnessing the demographic dividend. \\

Sharda Prasad Director General, Employment & Training and Joint Secretary, Ministry of Labour & Employment, Government of India

Shri Sharda Prasad is serving the Government of India as Director General with the Directorate General Employment & Training, Ministry of Labour & Employment. The Minsitry is the apex organisation for development and coordination of national level programmes relating to vocational training and employment services.