Ram Rattan Sharma
It is argued that economic growth of India has remained restricted to a few sectors and sections only. The argument was reinforced by the economic survey (2015-16) when it said that during first decade of 21st century (2001-2011) growth rate of Labour force was significantly higher than growth rate of employment, which itself was several fold less than overall growth rate of the economy. After the liberalization norms, services sector rather easily recruited Urban English educated youth, whereas Industries could not absorb and transform peasants, who were willing or compelled to leave agriculture into industrial worker. Major cause of this was that this transition required skilled training flexible labour laws and incentives for enterprises to grow, all of which were painfully missing for the Job growth to take place in industry. The end result of all these processes has been rising unemployment, it was therefore, inevitable that policy makers paid more attention to the unemployment crises. There has been a pronounced change in the approach of Government in dealing with it. The current approach is more based upon empowering the people with the requisite skills, they would need in an enterprise, and giving the people more opportunities to start small scale enterprises of their own, India has been a country that celebrates knowledge and intellect skills, but vocational and skill development courses are looked down upon and such students are automatically relegated to a lower level in comparison to those who pursue professional degree courses. Even the aspirations of youth imagine only the formal education courses for the employment even if it is means a low paid employment than the blue color work. It is here that skill India mission is trying to make a significant dent with the explicit objective, for the first time, to raise the social awareness about the values of skills and vocational education, so that their dignity could be restored. Dismal numbers in the labour bureau report 2014 show that the current size of India’s formally skilled work force was only about two percent and, also the fact that there is a huge army of educated unemployed youth. This points to a significant flow in our education system, Huge gap remained between the talent coming out of the colleges and its suitability in terms of employ ability. The need for appropriate and adequate skill development, which could convert the youth into technically skilled manpower , was direly felt. The skill India mission aims to create a skilled and Job ready work force by equipping with employable skills. The mission aims to skill over 40 crore people by 2022 so that they could be absorbed in the industry. Skill India mission is also an attempt to correct the historical mistake of de -context-ualising the vocational education from formal education. One of the explicit objectives of skill India mission has been the recognition of the need of convergence between formal and vocational education. Recognition of prior learning and the push towards vocationalization of education would go a long way towards attaining the goal of inclusive growth.
National policy for skill development, and entrepreneurship 2015-vision of this policy is to create an ecosystem of empowerment by skilling on a large scale with high standards, and to promote a culture of innovation based entrepreneurship which can generate India has charted the Unique growth path, Jumping directly from the agriculture sector to the services sector in India. Which does not augur well for the country as the latter is not inclusive. Make In India is an initiative to encourage the companies to increase manufacturing in the country so as to realize the dream of creating 10 crore Jobs in the country and to increase the share of manufacturing in the country’s gross domestic product from 16 to 25 percent by 2022, more useful for the rural youth would be particular focus upon the micro, small and medium enterprises sector in the Make in India programme. Govt. on its own cannot provide employment to all. With the dominant belief of Job creators, rather than Job seekers, these programmnes, therefore are aimed at harnessing entrepreneurial capabilities of Indians. The Govt. must intervene less and rather should play the role of a facilitator, has been the common theme running through them. Small scale business generate more employment contrary to the common perception of bigger industries generating more employment. Economic census 2014 underlines the fact that only 4 percent of the credit needs of 5.8 crore small and micro enterprises are addressed by the formal banking system. The Pradhanmantri Mudrayojna is being viewed as an essential to fill this Lacuma. It is responsible for refinancing all the last mile financers engaged in lending to small scale businesses. In essence, therefore, it can also integrate all hundreds of thousands of informal financer into formal financial system.
Start up India programme of the Govt. aims to produce technical entrepreneurs in the country by making the business environment conducive for their growth. Various measures for this include Rs.10000 crores of funding for the next four years, exemptions from tax and labour inspection for the start ups for the first three years speedier patent clearances with the exchequer footing most of the bill, and promises to fix taxation hurdles that deter domestic and global financiers from bank rolling new ventures, stand up India scheme is to promote the entrepreneurship among SC/ST and women under the stand up India scheme, SC/ST and women entrepreneurs will be provided loans from 10 lakh to Rs. One crore for setting up enterprises. This will help in creating 2.5 lakh entrepreneurs throughout the country. A new scheme National sports Talent Search has been formulated for talent identification in the age group of 8-12 years at a time where the interests for support is waining among parents and not many parents are interested in their child pursuing a career in sports, This supports scheme is a right thing at a right time.
It is hoped that all these schemes and programmes are able to deliver their intended out comes. These are largely based upon the idea of empowering people to overcome their deprivations and disabilities. The scheme based upon the idea of empowerment are more likely to be successful and sustainable than those based upon entitlements. However, one has to be extra cautious in monitoring the outcomes of these initiatives.
(The author is former
Dy Librarian
University of Jammu)
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