<div><em><strong>K Yatish Rajawat</strong> says the focus of the National Skill Development Corporation should be on rural population, a much wider range of skills and it should be measured on employability</em><br><br><br>The government seems to be unware that the most important aspect of its Skill India initiative is languishing as the primary agency for executing this -- the National Skill Development Corporation -- is mired in all kinds of ills. Skilling is more important for a populous country like ours it does not get the same kind of respect as education.</div><div> </div><div>Indians still rate education higher than skills, a Macualay complex that has destroyed the respect for people who work with their hands. Parents focus so highly on education and so little on skills of their children that they are willing to spend the bulk of their disposable income on education. The myth which is perpetuated from generation to generation is that with education everything is possible.</div><div> </div><div><table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" style="width: 200px"><tbody><tr><td><img alt="" src="http://bw-image.s3.amazonaws.com/Yatish-Rajawat-200.jpg" style="width: 200px; height: 200px; margin: 1px; float: right;"></td></tr><tr><td><strong>K Yatish Rajawat</strong></td></tr></tbody></table>Education up to the higher secondary level is necessary to learn the 3Rs, but in India, higher education even post- graduation is considered necessary. Parents feel that unless the child graduates he will not be able to get a job, get married or do anything in life. The constant refrain that you hear is “ child do your college’ after that you can do what you want. Students quickly realise that college is such a myth as it’s just a place for meeting others. There is hardly any education happening there.</div><div> </div><div>Unless and until it is an engineering college and that too a premier one, the daily schedule of each college is so loose that most students just waste those years. The concerned among them realise very soon that they need to add skills and so they join a computer course, or enroll in ICWA, ICAI etc. All these courses add real skills but are not easy, and especially learning computers is a mind mess.</div><div> </div><div>Moreover, these courses are not cheap, accessible or available to every student in the country. The worst is when a student from a rural area finishes his college from the nearest city and realizes that he in unemployable. </div><div> </div><div>NSDC as a PPP entity was supposed to use government resources to train people for the industry requirement. Unfortunately its objectives were loosely defined. While the government has been met its funding requirement, NSDC has not met the industry requirements. Nor has it been able to scale up as required.<br> </div><div>Basically, NSDC has been doling out funds to non-profit or corporates who are in the skill development business. It gives a derisory Rs 8000 or so for every individual who is certified as skilled by the companies getting the grants. It has established various councils for each sector to map the skills in a comprehensive manner. But as it is measured on the number of people provided skilled training it focuses on that number. When the focus should be on number of people trained and provided jobs. </div><div> </div><div>This is an important distinction as the focus should be on these skilled people being able to get a job or start a business. This was expected to happen automatically as NSDC had active support of the largest industry body CII. Unfortunately, CII may have supported but individual companies do not look at NSDC as a resource center for their requirements.</div><div> </div><div>This is due to myriad of reasons, most of the people who are involved in drafting the skills requirement for NSDC are not HR managers. HR professionals from corporates in manufacturing, engineering, construction and BPO sector need to look at NSDC as an employment and training partner. There is a dearth of shortage in construction sector for trained electricians and masons. But NSDC has not focused on this skill shortage as it is not something that urban aspirants want to do. <br> </div><div>This is also because most of the companies that NSDC has funded are based in major metros or cities. None of them have looked at rural population skilling. Therefore, a lot of people may have got trained for opening a parlour or for learning English skills but very few on masonry. |</div><div>Urban youths are obsessed with white colour jobs, and most companies receiving funding from NSDC have focused only on this population. I have pointed out in detail in earlier article about addressing the aspirations of the youth. Interestingly, the only take away the Minister took from this article which had an huge impact was to insist on monitoring of NSDC, see his interview here. The challenge with the monitoring proposed by the minister is that it will effectively kill what little work NSDC is doing. The performance will further deteriorate if monitoring is on the lowest bidder. </div><div> </div><div>NSDC is the biggest vehicle for Skills India. It needs to be reformed and its focus should be on rural population, a much wider range of skills and should be measured on employability.</div><div> </div><div><strong>K Yatish Rajawat is a senior journalist based in New Delhi</strong></div><div><strong>tweets @yatishrajawat</strong></div>
