Delhi: Welcome progression

On the first ever world youth Skills day (July 15), the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government launched the Skill India initiative, the third such ambitious programme after Make in India and Digital India in recent months. A National Skill Development Mission and a new National Policy for Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (NPSDE) 2015 are highlights of what is essentially a revamped version of the National Skill Development (NSD) policy of the Congress-led UPA II government launched in 2009. The national mission is a booster to achieve NPSDE in mission (urgent) mode. Besides, revision of NSD 2009 was required because of an in-built five-year review clause in it, and the changing skill development landscape. NPSDE 2015, launched by prime minister Narendra Modi together with the booster Skill India initiative, is a departure from the NSD 2009 in terms of focus. While the latter was primarily focused on setting skilling standards with involvement of the private sector, NPSDE 2015 has the virtue of introducing skilling into the education system — an overdue initiative. NSD 2009 served the useful purpose of establishing sector skill councils to prescribe syllabuses and curriculums of 37 trades and vocations besides establishing the National Skills Development Corporation, which funded private vocational education and training (VET) firms.   “The new policy contains a structural framework and mechanism for introducing VET into the education system,” says Navin Bhatia, managing director of the Delhi-based Navkar Centre for Skills which has established 34 VET centres countrywide. Starting with Kaushal Kendras (skill centres) at the village level, NPSDE 2015 envisages a multi-level skills education system with VET introduced into high school curriculums, Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) at block level, community colleges, polytechnics and private VET providers at districts level, and state government skills universities.  “The primary objective of this policy is to meet the challenge of skilling at scale with speed, standard (quality) and sustainability… the policy also identifies the overall institutional framework which will act as a vehicle to reach the expected outcomes,” says the policy document. Among the ambitious targets of NPSDE 2015 are introduction of VET in 25 percent of the country’s secondary schools from class IX onwards over the next five years, and integration of skills acquisition and training into higher education with polytechnics offering National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF, designed by sector skills council under NSD 2009) vocational courses and bachelor of VET degrees. Quite clearly, the new NPSDE 2015 is comprehensive, ambitious and overdue but the moot point is whether the under-developed Indian economy has the capacity and resources to implement it. In February when presenting the Union Budget 2015-16, for the first time ever, finance minister Arun Jaitley reduced the Centre’s education outlay, expressing the hope that state governments awarded a larger share of Central government tax revenue by the 14th Finance Commission, will take up the slack. Most economists rule out any such possibility. “To skill 400 million citizens requires massive investment in human capital development. There’s a huge shortage of workshops, laboratories, content, teachers,…