Shoot to skill

In his Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced that the government intended to push its skills development mission forward, and would set up a Skills Development Corporation to involve the private sector; less than a week later, the government has set a deadline for the corporation to start work. Good ideas in this field have taken ages to be realised, so this is a pleasant surprise. The corporation is to be 51 per cent funded by the private sector, and will have Rs 15,000 crore at its disposal. This is a good idea, a big idea, and a forward-looking idea.

We have all heard at length that India8217;s great advantage is its young, mobile workforce. Integrating it is the problem: vocational training has hitherto suffered from a disconnect between what is offered and what is required. This gap is born of stultified training systems and unaccountable teachers and administrators, and can only be closed when industry is given more of a hand in the designing of curricula, the invisible hand is given more play in maintaining the usefulness of the training system, and permitting it to respond to changed requirements nimbly.

There is every hope that this plan, both because of its scale 8212; its 8220;game-changing8221; possibilities, in its own hopeful words 8212; and its emphasis on direct connections between the learner and the provider as well as on responding to industry8217;s concerns, will serve to make that gap increasingly a thing of the past. It contains many ideas that we must all start thinking of as essential components of government policy: an emphasis on taxpayers8217; money going to the end-user rather than the service provider; close links with the non-governmental sector; and a clear understanding that what is created 8212; in this case, skills 8212; must be ascribed the value that the market assigns it. By 2020 India will dominate the world8217;s workforce. This plan is a first step in ensuring that that dominance is benign.