From Skill Development to Nation`s Development: A Giant Leap of Pragmatic Dream !

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It is belief of government of India that skills and knowledge are the driving forces of economic growth and social development of any country. They have become even more important given the increasing pace of globalization and technological changes taking place in the world. As India moves progressively towards becoming a “Knowledge Economy”, it becomes increasingly important that vocational education and training (VET) create and nurture a skill

development system. The issue of skill building has been at the forefront of policy debates in recent years. Unprecedented scope for skill development in the country arises from the unique 25-year window of opportunity, called India's demographic dividend. Skill enhancement of the younger generation is imperative to trigger economic development in India. Moreover, it is expected that the ageing economy phenomenon in rich countries will globally create an acute shortage of skilled manpower approximately 56.5 million by 2020. 

This belief goes further in asserting that by getting the skill development act right, India can have a skilled manpower surplus of approximately 47 million Skill formation, productivity and growth are interlinked. Skill perceived as the ability to efficiently utilize human energy and perform better in any occupation, could be acquired and updated. Skill needs are always dynamic and acquired skills need to match demand on a continuous basis. Skill base of population in India is very low. Nearly 90 percent of total population in India do not have any skills. 

See the exactly opposite picture belying this hope. As per 61st NSSO Survey, 2004-05, the total workforce in the Indian economy was 459 million of which the unorganized sector accounted for 395 million, constituting 86 percent of the total workers (and 433 million, i.e. 93 percent of the total workforce was in informal employment).2 The sector cuts across all economic activities and includes rural and urban areas. It contributes to about 60 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The unorganized sector is dominated by own-account workers; workers and apprentices in micro enterprises; unpaid family workers; casual labourers; home based workers; peripatetic workers and migrant labourers; out-of-school youth and adults in need of skills; and farmers and artisans in rural areas. These groups are characterized largely by low skills, poor productivity and, low and uncertain income.

Also, consider following challenges in realizing the targets of skill development. 1) Sheer size of unorganized sector, 2)Too heterogeneous, broad age range, unorganized, widely distributed sector, 3)Generally poor educational level, 4) Trainers must know and be able to communicate in local language, 5) Existing skills have been acquired largely through informal apprenticeship, 6) Competencies not certified, 7) High opportunity cost to trainee, 8) Training as worker's right in the context of RTE, 9) Should training not be a requirement for employment in the organized sector?, 10) Research in Training pedagogy and delivery issues, 11) Training coordination, 12) Requiring formal sector training institutions to work also for unorganized sector, 13) Service sector as an area of special thrust, 14) Methodological and Logistical problems in carrying out surveys

Educational levels of the labour work force, which have significant bearing on capacity to acquire and absorb skills, have not undergone any significant changes in last twenty years.  Improving the educational and skill levels could seriously contribute to productivity growth. The skill up-gradation all the more important to take advantages of the "demographic dividend". Poor skill and educational levels could also be a factor for the predominance of informal sector and near stagnant employment in organised sector. Considering the importance of skill development and training, the eleventh five year plan launched a National Skill Development Mission to bring about a paradigm change in handling of "Skill Development"programs. A three tier structure of Prime Minister`s National Council on Skill Development, secondly National Skill Development Coordination Board and National Skill Development Corporation. 

Since vocational training is a concurrent subject in the Indian Constitution, both the Central and State governments share the responsibility of financing vocational training. The Central Government has created a Skill Development Fund with an initial corpus of Rs. 99.5 billion for supporting the activities of the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) to provide financial support to skill development initiatives emanating from the private sector. The corpus of the fund is expected to go up to about Rs.150 billion as it is intended to garner capital from governments, public and private sector, and bilateral & multilateral sources.

In skill development and training, both the content and the delivery mechanism are equally important. This sets the case for involvement of corporate sector. Corporates in India need to be aware about their social responsibility.  Ten most important sectors of the economy where skill gaps have been identified could be picked up for initial action. These sectors are: auto & auto components, building & construction industry, transport & logistics, organised retail, healthcare, food processing, education & skill development, gems and jewelery, leather & leather goods. ITIs hold the key to cater to the needs of manufacturing sector. Informal service sector has emerged as an important sector with large employment opportunities. Despite the sound intentions, there is lack of linkages with industry; many of the skills have been drawn up without active consultation with industry. No attempt has been made to standardize curriculum across ITIs.  

The skill gap in Indian economy are across the spectrum and are not confined to lower or intermediate levels. Even at the top level, full equivalent of man-power employed in primary R&D is just around one lakh persons.  The thrust of skills, therefore, is required at traditional and modern industry levels and also at the level of basic sciences and research. Skill gap should also be identified at the top level and incentive structure should be such which encourages people to take these activities. Efforts are needed to bring vocational education programs parallel to the normal conventional school and college program by providing lateral induction from one stream to another at all stages. This will remove the apprehensions of vocational training as inferior to conventional education and an option for school leavers/dropouts. 

In most countries, apprenticeship concept is the most important intermediary step for improving employability of the workers. In India, there is no institutionalized infrastructure which matches an apprentice candidate to an employer, an employer to a candidate, and a trained apprentice to a job. The apprenticeship regime therefore did not pick up. This must be remodeled so that it becomes effective on job training rather than compliance with the act without any focus on the outcome. Reason for the limited use of apprenticeship route for employment for the trainees is the low rates of stipend and for the enterprise its cost. 

Skill standard-based curriculum and assessments provide students with credentials that link recognition with workplace requirement. Industries then are expected to be involved in developing benchmarks for assessments to evaluate skills, knowledge and abilities in classrooms and on-the-job training or internships. The training modules and materials of the various trades of ITIs have become outdated and are not in line with the needs of the industry. This could be a continuous exercise. Identifying learning needs and needs of skill identification and standardization can be mapped by coalition of industry bodies or sectoral skill councils. These councils can work on identifying skill development needs with an emphasis on employability and training sector wise, mapping the standards of training, procedures of delivery. The councils can also measure quality assessment criteria by reviewing mechanism and parameters on which training institutes and programs. Next, these councils can determine competence standards and qualifications as per the changing scenario of industry employability. 

The structured ways to impart skill development could be (i) using innovative delivery models such as decentralized delivery, mobile training, distance learning, e-learning and web-based learning; (ii) involving panchayats, municipalities and other local bodies in skill development and employment generation at the local level in collaboration with Self Help Groups (SHGs), cooperatives and Non-government Organisations (NGOs); (iii) establishing sector specific Labour Market Information System (LMIS) and Human Resource Planning at national and state levels, and area-specific planning at local levels with the help of Sector Skill Councils (under National Skill Development Corporation) to undertake labour market analysis; (iv) establishing a 'National Vocational Qualifications Framework' to facilitate standardized and acceptable, international comparability of qualifications; and (v) strengthening and upgrading Employment Exchanges under the National Employment Service to provide counselling, guidance and placement services to employment seekers. However, all these are actions to be taken in the future. 

India is at the cusp of a great new opportunity: the demographic dividend. The proportion of the dependent population is decreasing, and the share of the working age population has been increasing, and will continue to increase over the next two decades. If they are not productively employed, this dividend might become a demographic nightmare. On the other hand, if they are better educated and more skilled, they will be able to not only contribute to India's growth. 

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Let us plan together...going beyond state and districts, towards talukas and villages.

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Setting new standards--planning to improve the implementation of new procedures according to them-- improving the level of excellence according to the quality benchmarks already set in--then moving to create the assets which will help in the operation of the various schemes the government is running and finally monitoring and evaluation of the funds used in all these operations; these are all the things which are being reviewed again and again in the view of 12th plan formulation of the approach towards centrally sponsored schemes under which money is being allocated to the district administration.

Increasingly there is feeling that funds being transferred from centre to states for empowerment of Panchayati raj institutions and for the development schemes run by them are being directed through various grey routes as slush funds for ' employment guarantee' of few vested interests. Everyone talks about social audit of the funds and schemes at the Panchayat, tehsil and district level. Interestingly, recent upsurge of Lokpal Movement also highlighted ' auditing ' at higher levels of administration. Few people in beuracracy feel that social auditing is like plucking a tree after being planted and then complaining that it is not growing. So, a new comprehensive approach is being demanded by beurecrats for smooth functioning of the scheme. This seems to be exactly opposite of the kind of demands social movements are making about accountability and transperency.

Anywhere documenting the problems in details creates huge aspirations in society. Any how, these kind of socially communicated wish lists have its own political benefits. It creates positive pressure groups and waves of proactive actions which ultimately benifits people. While everyone will agree to the fact that details are very important in the planning process, many times we tend to miss the qualitative aspects of nuanced issues. When missionisation of government schemes related to health, education happens, these schemes do come under fire from concerned different ministries. This must be the reason that in the 12th plan there is special emphasis on the moving out of the silos and having harmonious integration of coordination with the ministries while implementing the development schemes and the innovative efforts government is trying to take.

During the consultation processes or working groups of policy formulations many times the experience is that final outcome of draft is very much different from the original unerstanding of the issue. One may call it cumulative improvement about the understanding or the comprehension of the gravity of the issues. But there needs to be a structure while documenting the key issues involved during the discussion of the problem under consideration. The approach of many meetings to explore different kinds of documenting resources, techniques or technologies is very poor considering the kind of challenges being faced in the spectrum of policies. When the broad parameters are designed there should be capacity of the recieving audience to comprehend the details involved in those issues. For that different kind of mapping techniques can be used. This is a matter of mind set change. If we view every issue in matter of text and numbers only we will be definitely missing the larger ground relaities on the ground.

There will be no doubt about the assertion that any policy must be people driven. Normally, we always believe thatv we should create institutional framework and those institutions will take care of the mechanisms, processes and the kind of operations involved in the performance of the specific task. Going beyond this, HRD approach tells us that we should be investing in the ability of the people to deliever. We have to create environment of trust within different stakeholders. Then only they will share key contextual information which will lead towards formation of common knowledge about the problem. We need to consistently train the people. We need to reward the people for their innovative ideas and steps they have taken in their respective domain of work. We need to secure their well being in terms of their basic needs in order to motivate them to contribute them meningfully towards the work they are doing in development projects.

Key question is despite that billions of crores being poured, why the certain areas are always backward. In the era of liberalisation where there is huge increase in indirect taxes, central government is pulling the strings about the allocations of the many development schemes. So central government is calling the shots to motivate the district administration for the execution of all the schemes. But are all these schemes and huge some of money is making effect. The number of centrally sponsored schemes to the states is huge. Previous number was 230, before it was chopped down to 99 and again was increased to 120. It is interesting to note that top 15% of the schemes eat up almost 95% of the money. Do we need more schemes? Or we need fair rationalisation of the number of schemes and funds to have maximum impact on the capacity of the decentralised panchayati raj to solve their problems? Is the approach of only relying on the district administration for approaching all development problems is reliable or we need to go to tehsil and village level by looking at the data in more desaggrigated way so as to have more incisive microplanning? The questions are manifold.

We need to think in the direction of asking the question: is there any other way or choice to strengthen the vehicle of channeling development efforts other than decentralisation? How approach of rural development policies can be made more harmonious by including talukas and panchayats more, going beyond district administration? How we can accomodate rising political ambitions of the Panchayati Raj system to enforce a lot of energy and incentive for creating conducive enviornment of accountability and performance in implementation of the different schemes? Will always roof top solutions will work? Do we ever measure the governance deficit? If we do not measure it, we will lose the opportunity to take corrective measures also. Do we need to concentrate on the qualitative aspects of the issues rather than just looking at the quantitative aspects of the every scheme? Do we only want to fight for the funds or we should be fighting for the creating the enabling environment for having optimum impact of the work being done in perticular area.

Government is relying hugely on different types of Rights acts like employment gurantee, food security, information access and more recently delievery of services. Beyond creating this rights based approach do governments of our times have convergent vision about creating the environment of hope, aspirations and constructive engagement with the issues by more participative way? Do government has shared vision of rural development across the board of ministry of finance, rural development and Planning Commission? Understanding all these questions will only enable to have detailed understanding about microplanning we need to look more seriously towards. Real movers and shakers of development are in the states as recognised by recent state elections and examples like Nitish Kumar, Navin Patnaik, Tarun Gogoi, Shiv Raj Singh Chauhan. Here the name and the political affiliation of the people at the helm is not being highlighted. But the point is that they have the capability, knowledge and socio-political will power and context to mobilise the what I call anthropoligally sound manifesto of development. So, role of centre must become less and less to enable states to do more and more. That is the real spirit of federalism, we dont know word forgotten long ago but burning beneath the surface of the issues like Telengana etc. So, bottomline is centres must respect the political leap of faith expressed by different states in their understanding of the development paradigm they wish to enter in. 

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What state plans mean for national development: Devil and God both lies in details....

Maharashtra to Publish Human Development Report Every Year.
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Planning Commission has approved annual state plan for Maharashtra 2011-12 worth Rs. 42,000 crores, a 500 crore in addition to what state government proposed in its presentation before Planning Commission in New Delhi on Thursday. According to the sources, the Planning Commission has applauded Maharashtra state’s performance in many areas.


The key issues discussed in today’s meeting were water, power, and infrastructure, millennium development goals of nutrition, sanitation, and infant mortality. The discussions about water and power were largely centered about the availability of coal to new power plants being proposed or coming up in the state. A large number of investors who wish to establish power plants are interested in Vidarbha region because of its proximity to the coal resources in Chattisgarh and Orissa. Even though state government has a policy, which gives freedom to new private investors to establish power plants without any licensing, out of the total Memorandum of Understanding signed by state government with the private investors, only 10 percent projects are moving towards status of formal start. The companies which wish to invest in Konkan region are thinking about importing quality coal from abroad but imported coal is not cheap compared to domestic coal. Therefore, Vidarbha is gaining more importance in terms of increasing investment in power projects. State government has expressed its concern saying, while much of the power need is being felt in Western Maharashtra, ensuring the dedicated coal supply from far regions to the power plants is a problem, considering the role of railways involved.


Planning Commission congratulated Maharashtra state for establishing Water Regulatory Authority and appealed to state government to work on the tariff modalities, so that Planning Commission can learn from this unique experiment to accommodate the lessons to draft Model Act on Water Regulatory Authority to be listed in the 12th Plan Document. Planning Commission also felt this draft model act, would be useful in guiding other states in implementing this regulatory system in their state. Maharashtra, under its Water Regulatory Authority has decided water entitlement for 260 projects. State government informed Planning Commission about the revised policy of the government about the priority of the water usage in the state. According to the Barve Commission report of 1962, the priority was set in order of drinking water, industry and agriculture. But state government has revised the order keeping drinking water at first place, while agriculture taking higher priority over industrial use. Therefore, the issue of water allocation is also becoming crucial n the clearance of the new power plants.


Planning Commission expressed concern over the pattern of water use in state. Pointing out that of the total cultivation in the state of Maharashtra, sugarcane is cultivated on only 2 percent land, but it is consuming over 70 % of water available for irrigation. State government has promised to look into this matter citing this as a politically sensitive matter. Commission noticed that state government is investing only half percent of the total irrigation budget for the development of command area. On this issue, state government clarified that priority of state government being focused on securing water in the dams rather than investing it for irrigation projects, in the light of mandatory deadlines of water sharing agreements between Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.


Planning Commission praised state government’s initiative in reducing the load shedding and the claim of the state government that state will be load shedding free by 2012. At the same time Planning Commission cautioned about transmission and distribution losses. Current peak power deficit of Maharashtra is 3000- 3500 MW. Planning Commission has suggested the state government to learn from the experience of Haryana, which is currently implementing PPP model in power transmission investing 400 crores. Apart from this, the State government informed about its scheme under which agriculture sector is not provided electricity during peak hours during day. Instead, they are being provided electricity in non-peak periods, without compromising the domestic 24 hours electricity supply. This has ensured lesser load shedding along with lesser loss of water.


Notably, the state government expressed its deep concern over the conservative role played by State Electricity Regulatory Authority in deciding the electricity tariff structure, which is not helpful to the efforts of state government to recover from the challenges in the power sector. State government also assured Planning Commission that government is not interfering in the operations of the MERC. In turn, the Planning Commission suggested that the government should look more positively towards the ‘Open Access’ policy mooted by Central Electricity Authority under which, any big consumer can purchase energy from anywhere, and thereby loosen burden on the state electricity distribution boards. In this respect, state government informed Planning Commission that state has initiated policy in which consumers using more than one megawatt of electricity are relieved from state regulator tariff and they can access energy on market price.


State government requested Planning Commission to expedite the Land Acquisition Act so that it can implement many power and other infrastructure projects, which are being delayed otherwise. The major infrastructure projects discussed today were MIHAN SEZ project of Nagpur, international airports at Nagpur, Navi Mumbai and Chakan, Pune. State government requested Planning Commission to assist in the expedition of the MIHAN project and international airport at Nagpur, so that crucially important location like Nagpur can be used for direct exports of goods. State government appealed Planning Commission to look carefully into the matter of viability gap regarding the MIHAN project. The Viability Gap Funding Scheme provides financial support in the form of grants to infrastructure projects undertaken through public private partnerships with a view to make them commercially viable. Central Government has established a Viability Gap Fund to aid the PPP infrastructure projects which face the viability gap due to inherent nature of the project. The Scheme is administered by the Ministry of Finance. Planning Commission appealed to the state government to look for the viability of the Metro project in Mumbai and suggested to look towards solely state funded project rather than approaching PPP route in this respect. State government has not notified SEZ act yet so the initiatives on this part are yet to take any shape.


In the wake of 25 % of the awards given to villages by the President of India for sanitation campaign going to Maharashtra, the Planning Commission expressed its concern over the consistent pattern of these villages falling back on their performances in this regard. Planning Commission suggested establishing a feedback system or implementing a check list for assessing the performance of these villages in cumulative manner. Regarding the ‘Total Sanitation Campaign’, the state government is embarking on a mission under which, every state government building would be ensured with the availability of ladies toilets, going beyond the routine practice of building toilets in primary schools to help reduce the drop out rates of the girl students. State government has requested Planning Commission to consider additional assistance to extend sanitation scheme for secondary educational institutions and beyond.


State government has suggested novel idea to Planning Commission about checking of water quality in the state. According to this idea, every Science College, medical college, engineering college in particular area can use its laboratory and human resources to check quality of the water in the area in consistent manner. Planning Commission has commended this idea and promised to look at it more seriously at central level.


State government informed Planning Commission about its experiment in Kolhapur district where sonography machines are being monitored for the actual girl sex determination and thus ensuring the check on the female feticide. Punjab government has taken note of this experiment. State government has requested Planning Commission to guide it about the possible implications of the widespread implementation of this experiment because it may provoke ethical debates in future. Planning Commission has expressed deep concern about the greater girl child infant mortality in minority population in Parbhani, Jalna, Washim and Buldhana districts. Commission appealed state government to expedite some kind of research study to identify the reasons for this greater girl child infant mortality in other backward districts of the state also.


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