True to Narendra Modi?s announcement of changing the country from a ?Scam India to Skill India?, FM Arun Jaitley made several announcements to encourage skilling and vocational training in the Union Budget 2014. By stepping up vocational training and bringing it at par with the higher education system, he announced the ?Skill India? programme and allocated an amount of R14,389 crore for job-creation, a huge part of which will be spent in training the youth. Focus on tourism and manufacturing industries will generate employment and is a good sign for launching courses in these domains.
The NSDC Star programme was initiated to encourage skill development for the youth by providing monetary rewards for successful completion of approved training programmes during last year?s Budget and was focused on retail management and jewellery & gems training. The FM announced the continuation of the scheme and making them more demand-driven.
Apart from helping the youth in acquiring necessary skills, job-creation also remains the most challenging aspect for the government. Employability is a huge crisis in our country right now as only 34% of the graduates are employable. Vocational training needs to be made a part of the higher education system to bridge this gap effectively. The Apprentice Act and NSDC programmes can help in this respect.
Given the economic liberalisation that our government is initiating through FDI, etc, we expected the Budget to focus on MoUs and collaborations with international universities for Indian students to get international exposure. We need to understand that if we are opening our doors to foreign companies, our workforce needs to be prepared to deliver at par with international standards. It was shocking to see that none of our universities featured in the top 100 universities worldwide and hopefully the additional IITs and IIMs the government is planning to set up will help tackle this gap to an extent.
Merging the higher education sector and vocational training is a positive step as we need to add credibility to such trainings, which currently fail to attract the youth. Proper accreditation can encourage them to train and be absorbed into the workforce. At Achievers Zone, our trainings take us across India and we witness a huge potential in the semi-urban and rural areas. This step will encourage the youth populace there to be skilled and be a part of the workforce.
The FM also announced a spending of R100 crore to start village entrepreneurship training schemes to encourage the rural youth to start their own ventures. Multi-skill focus and the need to integrate self-employment is big departure from the current policy of insisting that all skill development should lead to employment. Indians are entrepreneurs at heart, and by encouraging this spirit we can ensure development at the grass-root level where the individuals and the community can benefit?and which eventually will impact at a macro level. It is encouraging to see our government recognising this entrepreneurial spirit and allocating an additional R100 crore under Young Leaders programme and Aajeevika programme run by the ministry of rural development, which will provide concessional loans at 4% for funding local entrepreneurship.
MSMEs account for huge portion of our revenue and revamping the apprenticeship programme can generate jobs. With a R10,000 crore fund allotted to MSMEs, this scheme, if implemented properly, could be a game-changer for both the MSMEs and the fresh graduates and thereby the whole economy.
This Budget focused on skilling and on ramping up the manufacturing and infrastructure industry. The employment creation per crore of investment is many times bigger in service industry. However, the FM did not spell out how employment will be created in the economy. Skilling increases supply of manpower. If the demand is not there, this effort will be counterproductive. Excess supply will impact compensation, which is already happening.
Finally, we saw a Budget that can join all the dots; boost manufacturing and tourism sectors to create jobs; train the workforce to meet this demand; and provide loans and financial aid to allow the youth to train them. Though a few grey areas remain, overall it is good to see the government presenting more practical solutions to employability and unemployment. But what needs to be seen is how well these can be executed at a grass-root level.
Sachin Adhikari
The author is chief mentor, Achievers Zone
