Skilling reskilling upskilling fever raging countrywide

With the unrelenting march of automation and artificial intelligence, a spectre of unemployment and redundancy is haunting executive suites as much as college campuses. Therefore a fever to skill, reskill and upskill is pervading middle class India, if not less aware segments of the population writes Summiya Yasmeen After the Covid pandemic that swept the nation and took an officially estimated 533,570 lives (perhaps 10x the number, according to informed unofficial estimates), a new contagion is spreading countrywide: fear and loathing of unemployment and redundancy. With the unrelenting march of automation and artificial intelligence, a spectre of unemployment and redundancy is haunting executive suites as much as college campuses. Therefore a fever to skill, reskill and upskill is pervading middle class India, if not less aware segments of the population. With the ruling BJP/NDA government at the Centre and particularly BJP which has enjoyed a majority in Parliament for over a decade, receiving a shellacking from the electorate — its absolute majority in the 543-seats Lok Sabha was reduced from 303 to 240 in the recently (June) concluded General Election 2024 to a great extent on the issue of rising youth unemployment — in the Union Budget 2024-25 presented to Parliament on July 23, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has given top billing to employment and skilling the country’s children and youth. “The Union Budget 2024-25 focus is on employment, skilling, MSMEs and the middle class…. This year, I have made a provision for Rs.1.48 lakh crore for education, employment and skilling,” said Sitharaman. In her 145-minute budget speech, she announced several skills education initiatives to skill 41 million youth over the next five years; model skills loan schemes of up to Rs.7 lakh to 25,000 students per year; upgradation of 1,000 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) and an internship scheme for 10 million youth in 500 top companies. (see box p.53). This sudden awareness within the BJP leadership which hasn’t been serious about according high priority to public education — with the exception of Prakash Javadekar, all Union education ministers including incumbent Dharmendra Pradhan have been insular autocrats with no accountability to the media or public — has pleasantly surprised informed monitors of the neglected education sector. “Although a separate Union ministry of skill development was established in 2014 and ambitious targets were set by the Central and state governments, actual results on the ground remain far from set targets. While Budget 2024-25 has announced some significant skills education schemes, the government needs to do more to strengthen implementation of skilling programmes and the skill ecosystem in the country,” says Ajay Khanna, chairman of the Committee on Skill Development of PHD Chamber of Commerce & Industry (estb.1905), a Delhi-based industry promotion and advocacy organisation. Although opposition parties in Parliament especially Rahul Gandhi, leader of the Congress party which has ruled at the Centre and in most states for over half century, seem oblivious, skills education aka vocational education and training (VET) and foundational literacy and primary education, have been foolishly…