India, with 354.4 million people aged between 15 and 29, is credited for being the World’s largest youth population.
According to the ‘International Labour Organisation report’, India, with 354.4 million people aged between 15 and 29, is credited for being the World’s largest youth population. The era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, with technologies like AI, IoT, Machine Learning, digitization, and analytics, is changing the paradigm in every industry.
'Skill India Scheme' proposes to train the youth for relevant industry jobs for securing a better livelihood. Also, the government has paid fees for training and Assessment. However, big companies are trying to find skilled labor for the job.
Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2017-18 data indicated that around 33 % of India’s skilled youth is jobless. This presents a setback for PM Modi’s 'Skill India' and 'Make in India' schemes.
Government is trying to focus on state-level strategies for the development of state and implementation of services faster.
In the 'Union Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship report', India’s total workforce’s 4.69 per cent is formally skilled. Youth Skills Training is still a challenge. According to Census 2011 data, 104 million fresh entrants to the workforce will require skill training by 2022, and 298 million of the existing workforce will require additional skill training over the same period.
After Independence, the democratization of education was the step our government focused upon and took appropriate measures towards skilling the people while shaping India.
Late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi initiated Education policy for the first time, which was promulgated by Rajiv Gandhi. Now, PM Narendra Modi brought a new education policy, making a difference and changing the landscape of the education system. This new policy does so by addressing the requirement of education awareness and creating youth-oriented jobs in India to deal with the unemployment rate. By this Policy, the government is trying to tap skill India.
Some skill courses are:
In March, Tech Mahindra decided to re-skill 70% of its existing IT workforce in future-tech skills. This indicated how much we require to re-skill our workforce for handling obstacles of the future and emerging technologies. According to the NASSCOM report, 40 % of India’s total workforce requires re-skilling over the next 5 years.
Over 70 per cent of the population lives in rural India and women comprise 49% of the rural workforce. Hence, it becomes imperative that they receive technical skill training, work ethics, communication skills and soft skills for the developing market. Our previous and recent government has tried the best approach to deal with this critical issue. But there’s still scope for more improvements.
By Prashant Agarwal is the president of Narayan SevaSansthan, a non-profit organization serving differently able and underprivileged individuals.