Background

India is occupying two worlds simultaneously. In the first, rapid economic growth and social changes occur. In the other, a percentage of the population appears to be left behind due to lack of good social services, low employment opportunities and few prospects. Bridging this gap has been a major challenge. With more than a billion people and one third of the world’s poor, India needs rapid growth, together with strong employment creation and extended social protection, to reduce poverty and sustain income increases for its very young population.”

As opposed to developed countries, where the percentage of skilled workforce is between 60% and 90% of the total workforce, India records a low 5% of workforce (20-24 years) with formal vocational skills. With 70% of Indian population still living in rural areas there is a greater need to promote skill institutes in the rural areas. Although the public training institution (ITIs/ITCs) are imparting training in the rural space but so far have played a limited role in producing skills for the informal sector (less than 10% get employed/self-employed)[world bank]. Locally based non-government training providers – often NGOs are engaged in the skill development but lack capacity & resources to support the complete skill value chain. Most of the rural youth (40-60%) gets their trade specific skills through traditional apprenticeship which are based on traditional technologies and ideas from previous generations, and the quality of training is only as good as the skills of the master and master’s willingness & ability to pass on those skills.

There is a strong need to impart skills on self-employment by supporting the existing skill development institutions at every level of their skill development activity right from the trainee mobilization to the post-skill trainee handholding support. These institutions need course curricula based on national standards and that are vetted by expert agencies & participatory approach based training material to effectively impart the skills. Also, there has been a less focus on post-training support due to lack of resources without which the ultimate outcome of increased income & better quality of life couldn’t be achieved.