Skill varsity’s drone school to give training for rural, farming children

“Nearly 20,000 children from rural background and wards of farmers will be given preference in admission. They will be trained over a period of five years. This is being done looking at the huge scope of drones in agriculture right from spraying of fertilisers of sowing,” said Anju Sharma, principal secretary, Department of Labour, Skill Development and Employment.

KSU aims to establish the ‘School of Drones’ to provide a range of skill development programmes for encompassing the entire drone value-chain, from drone flying skills to assembly and maintenance, value added services such as data analysis, AI application among others.

“The school of drones will also facilitate training of trainers, research, innovation, incubation and entrepreneurship to foster start-ups in drones and allied sector. Already, Rs 20 crore has been allocated by the state for creating infrastructure and training manpower, of which a large part will go into a central laboratory at KSU,” Sharma added.

On “trainer entrepreneurs”, officials said the university plans to train at least 100 persons with minimum knowledge of drones this year who can further train others, earning a remuneration per student.

“Due to fluctuating demand in this sector, fast technology upgradation and non-availability of drone experts, state government decided not to hire these 100 trainers but create trainers who can then train others and earn at the same time,” an official associated with the development said.

Using the infrastructure of the university, these trainers whose remuneration will be linked to their performance, will be paid by the state government through university in case of free or subsidised training. More the trainees, the more the trainers earn with the university fixing the rates.

The state government also plans to take initiatives for development of human resources in other fields also, in view of the likely expansion of the drone sector and its extensive application for improving governance and achieving transformational changes in the fields of agriculture, policing, defence, and mining.

KSU has entered memorandum of understandingswith the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative , Drone Federation of India , Agriculture Skill Council of India , Electronics Sector Skill Council of India, Aerospace and Aviation Sector Skill Council, Telecom Sector Skill Council and IT-ITeS Sector Skill Council.