India’s skill development mission
which was launched in July 2015 and aimed to train more than 400 million people
by 2022 is not meeting the targets which has been setup for it. At the time of
launch everything looked right, there was a target segment, there was a need
and there was a design for delivery. The projections were grand, big consulting
firms worked 24X7 to make these grand plans and projections. A number of
private training centres were given funds and mandate to run these programs. But
still things are not looking rosy after four years. The number of people
trained in first three years after launch was in the range of 20-22 million
people with less than half of them landing in to some kind of job.
The question is what is hampering
this mission. Were the projections not correct? Whether the delivery mechanism,
not right? Was the target segment not interested? Then comes the questions
related to why placement targets are not met? How is the quality of training provided,
does it really add value to trainees? Are the courses contemporary?
The projections were made by
consulting agencies and they are masters of that, in the first place the target
segment was not defined correctly. Every one coming out of educational system
is not looking for skill training, he will not just turn up at the nearest
training centre, asking for training. The program failed to identify the target
segment correctly and then in creating a segment which will be interested in
these trainings.
Then comes the delivery
mechanism. The program focused a lot on creating new private training centres
to start with, this according to my understanding was a mistake. These training
centres mushroomed everywhere, but their main focus was to get funds and then
run these programs to make more money. Some big corporates joined in, but they
also worked on franchise model, which suffered from same set of problems as the
private training centres. Agencies both government and private failed to
utilize the existing infrastructure of ITIs, Diploma/Engineering colleges, Medical
colleges, Nursing colleges, Universities etc. Even good schools can do a better
job than most of the private training centres.
Coming to the question of
placement targets, the answer is simple. If so many of trained people were
required in organised sector, companies would have hired these people and
skilled them as per their requirement. If that is not happening it means the
requirement is somewhere else. Question is, if placement should even be a KPI
for this program. The program is run by bureaucrats and consulting agencies,
and as their experience goes, they see jobs as a big opportunity. For them
entrepreneurship is not an enabler. The focus of the program should have been
creating more entrepreneurs, more self-working people than finding jobs.
Quality of training provided and
programs being contemporary or not was another question mark. I will be a bit
philosophical on this. What is contemporary in the current age? Most of the
things are dynamic. Focus on development of learning skills can contribute more
instead of training for a specific skill. To give credit where it’s due, course
outlines for the program does highlight the need to develop learnability, but
most of the training centres are ill prepared for that and only focus on
specific skills.
The program needs to change its
approach. Bureaucrats are running it like the way they only can, do more of same
things which are not giving desired results. They are not working on analysing
the situation and changing it to suite current needs. Changing the narrative
might help in hiding the failures, but adopting a new narrative while accepting
the failure might bring this program on track.
