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Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that the Government’s present approach of providing free-of-cost skill development training serves a populist agenda, rather than being an impactful and sustainable welfare measure.

Paper long abstract:

The Government of India aims to address the issue that only a small percentage (4.69 percent) of the workforce in India is formally skilled. This problem acquires an even greater urgency considering that more than 62 percent of the country’s population is in the working age group (15-59 years), and more than 54 percent of the total population is below 25 years of age. Furthermore, on the demand side, a skills gap of 110 million workers by 2022 across 24 key sectors of the economy has been projected. The MSDE therefore aims to address the challenge of providing skills training at scale with speed, standard and sustainability in order to meet the rising aspirations of the country’s youth for sustainable livelihoods.

This paper argues that unless an integrated approach that addresses the gaps in the skill development ecosystem and considers the aspirations of people is adopted, the policy agendas would remain unfulfilled.

A typical trainee is knowledgeable, has the capacity to aspire and be an agent of change. Therefore, a participatory approach will promote better skills development outcomes and sustainable development. To ensure quality programme design and implementation, an integrated view of training, employment and development needs to be established. This includes, creation of local employment and entrepreneurship opportunities in sectors that are aspirational and provide decent wages. In addition, institutionalized provision of support services such as counselling, mentoring, networking and access to finance, is required. It is also important to strengthen the life-skills and experiential aspects of training to facilitate desired development outcomes, both in terms of personal and community development.

The effectiveness of skills development is also dependent on the labour market conditions. Therefore, skills development needs to be closely aligned with the emerging work trends which necessitates creating skills-based opportunities for entrepreneurship / self-employment in both rural and urban areas due to the lack of job creation in the formal sector, especially in the rural areas. There is also a need for mapping skilling with sectors in which jobs are created; aligning skills development processes to support migrating workers whose choices to work locally are constrained due to persistent differentials in wages and the ongoing process of urbanization; and ensuring improved skilling and employment outcomes for women for improved aggregate participation rates and economic growth. It is also important to ensure that skills delivery is decentralised and there is effective capacity building at the local government level.