Making India’s growing labour force employable

The study, Skill Develpoment for Inclusive Growth: Perspectives and Strategies, to be released on Thursday, notes that during this period, 800 million people will fall in the productive age group requiring skills training. To meet the current inadequacies in the training delivery mechanism, it recommends several measures aimed at creating an enabling environment.

They include concerted interventions in policy space, regulatory aspects and institutional structure.

The study estimates that the 20 high growth and employment sectors identified by the Planning Commission, will generate around 60 million job opportunities by 2012. Noting that the need for institutional infrastructure for skill development is enormous, the study recommends that government policy should support emergence of a large number of ‘for profit skill development institutions’ for sustainable outcomes.

“There should be policy initiatives to liberalise and incentivise sources for expanding resource base for skill development. In addition, National Vocational Training System should go beyond ITIs and be inclusive in according recognition to PPP ventures in skill development,” says the study.

Multiple policies dealing in education and vocational training should be merged so as to facilitate easy entry and exit of persons choosing to move from formal education space into vocational education or trade training space and vice versa, the study says.