Bridging The Gaps In The Skill India Mission
New Delhi: To improvise upon upgrading the masses, Prime Minister Narendra Modi initiated a National Skill Development Mission to train 500 million people by 2022, by empowering all individuals through improved skills, knowledge and qualifications to gain a way in to decent employment and guarantee India’s competitiveness globally. This mission promised not only to link to skill, but also link with entrepreneurship so that India progresses at both ends.
Skill-building is a crucial requirement in order to reap India’s professed demographic dividend. Various stakeholders are associated in the mission, such as PM’s National Council, National Skill Development Corporation, Sector Skill Councils and Training Partners. Along with national level skill development schemes like PMKVY, DDUGKY, Udaan and others, individual states have also deployed their own skill development programs.
With all these efforts put into the skill development policy, it still doesn’t bear the fruits that ideally had to be reaped. Here’s why the great mission is tending to slow down and not achieve desired results:
• Crisis in Mobilization: It has been quite a task to get student mobilization into an active mode in India since much lack the willingness to migrate or have a traditional mindset. There are plenty that also do not like the idea of a low salary at entry level.
• Right Mind-Set: The next challenge is to understand and match mobilized candidates with skills in the areas of their interests. This, if not done, has led to people undergoing skill training but not passing.
• Finding Employment: The most recent data by National Skill Development Corporation suggests that just a handful, i.e. approximately 40% candidates with skill training have got through the employment phase, however the rest are still hanging on to the thread of hope and optimism. The reasons for this may be lack of knowledge of available opportunities for the students, less connections with industry / companies.
• Concerns of Employers: Finding employment is crucial after getting skilled and certified, however most of the employers are not sure whether a candidate has actually picked up the required skills. The remaining still have to go through arduous training before businesses could find them desirable.
• Issues In Scalability: Rising ahead and beyond aspirations to current jobs, in addition to getting the right kind of training partners and valuable stakeholder management are imperative tasks that need to be met. Disparity between youth aspirations and the jobs still persist and need to be met.
A positive outcome to such crisis seems a bit farsighted from the stakeholders’ side however, innovation has no boundaries. Youth4work has devised an integrated solution to tackle these issues and help the stakeholders of Skill India mission. Youth4work is tying up with SSCs and Training Partners and helping them to aid the under-training students with practice tests for final assessments. Not only this is helping students in understanding online assessments and also increasing their pass ratio, but also getting them on a digital platform and connecting with world of opportunities. The intelligent technology connects the students with various companies looking to employ skilled resources. The training partners get to know these companies and approach them for possible partnerships to solve the employment issue. Students continue to explore various other employability enhancing options of the platform, thereby becoming ready-to-deploy talent pool.
Various skill councils including Telecom, Retail, Apparel sectors, Training providers like AISECT, ORION, Gras Academy and industrial players like Hero Motors, Ambuja Cements are using and exploring this platform for their students. In last 60 days alone, more than 150 companies have contacted students from training partners for work opportunities. The provision of providing skills that go hand in hand with employer benefits and a chance to tap in opportunity is what the nation truly needs today.
Every problem has a solution, and Youth4work manages to get that just in time.