The National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship 2015, a revision of India’s national skill development policy, aims to equip the vast majority of the country’s youth with industry-relevant skills to improve their employability and foster an innovation-based entrepreneurial culture that can create wealth and jobs. The stark disparity between the number of young people who have undergone recognised skill training and the employment of such trained people reflects underlying weaknesses and issues that require attention.
The significant dropout rate among applicants for the skill training programme also says a lot about the problems that have gone unsolved. The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation’s report, “Youth in India 2022,” exposes ground realities. It emphasises how formal and vocational training among young people (aged 15 to 29) has dramatically increased from 4.6% to 7.3% for urban Indian men and from 4.2% to 6.5% for urban women in 2020-21 over 2017-18. However, the discrepancy between urban and rural areas is clear from the fact that 2.6% of rural women obtained skill training in 2020–21 compared to 1.3% in 2017–18, while 3.4% of urban male youth enjoyed the benefits of skill development in 2020–21 over 2% in 2017–18. The survey also reveals that 86% of the youth population of the nation did not obtain any vocational or technical training, and of those, 5% were illiterate, 2% had not even finished basic school, and around 50% had completed secondary school or above. In order to accomplish the main goal of the national policy, it is essential that the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), the flagship programme for skill training, is implemented successfully. The training programme and curriculum under PMKVY were not in line with the actual industry requirements; the practical skills taught are not necessary for the industry, and the process for reporting the placement information of the candidates is labour-intensive and time-consuming. These three issues are significant, and they were not addressed in the information provided by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Labour, Textiles, and Skill Development. Another factor causing the urban-rural skill gap among young people is the concentration of training facilities in metropolitan regions and the development of training programmes to help village youth work in cities or urban areas. According to a report by the parliamentary panels, 20% of the youth participating in the 3.0 PMKVY training programmes dropped out. The Ministry explains it away as being due to medical reasons, family matters, social problems, distance from home to training facilities, social status upgrading due to married and attached lifestyle requirements, accessibility to a job, and no improvement seen in skills from the course materials or training programme.
The Committee voiced worry that some of the main problems that plagued PMKVY 2.0, such as poor placement rates and underutilization of allocated money, are still present despite the flagship scheme’s 3.0 revision. The Committee observes that only 30,599 of the 3,99,860 certified candidates were purportedly placed under PMKVY 3.0. Similar to the financial performance, the study notes that as of June 30, 2022, only Rs 294.98 crore of the total Rs 686.02 crore released had actually been utilised. The Committee reminds the Ministry that the very purpose of imparting training and certifying the candidates is defeated when placement statistics are abysmally low.