NEW DELHI, Jan 25: The Narendra Modi-led government has set an ambitious target of imparting skills to 30 crore people, one out of every four Indians, by 2020 to help them secure jobs as part of the new national skills development policy to be unveiled soon.
Recognising that achieving the target is a “challenge”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently chaired a meeting with the Skills Development and Labour Ministers where he gave “ideas and inputs” on the blueprint for training, by pooling in resources at the government’s disposal.
“We have conservatively estimated it (the total number of people to be skilled) would be about 30 crore people. We have brought it down to the five-year tenure of the government by 2020. The Prime Minister has seen it as a challenge,” Union Skills Development & Entrepreneurship Minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy told PTI in an interview.
Asked whether the target of training 30 crore people will be a part of the new national skills development policy being firmed up by his Ministry, Rudy replied in the affirmative.
The government has estimated that the cost of training works out to be a whopping Rs 4 lakh crore. It is now exploring the avenues for optimum use of resources to bring down this cost.
“We need roughly about Rs 4 lakh crore in the next five years which is huge. The costs have to be cut down by rationalisation of schemes, participation of the state governments and the infrastructure has to be pooled and commonly used”.
“We are trying to pool in resources of the entire public sector, which includes giants like Railways, Airport Authority of India, various public sector corporations across the country and defence,” Rudy said.
According to Rudy, the new skills policy will have a special emphasis on “soft skills”.
“The Prime Minister has emphasised that all people who are capable of reading and writing should essentially acquire soft skills to upgrade themselves. Soft skills are going to become an integral part of skills development capsule,” the Minister said.
Describing the enormity of the task at hand, Rudy said: “The people will have to be trained, they will have to be identified. There has to be a syllabus for training, which are the National Operating Standards (NOPs), you need large number of trainers, and then if you get trained to a certain level you need certification, and ultimately when a person gets certified he should be employable”.
The Minister of State for Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (Independent Charge) said the government is currently in the process of having a “relook” at the 2009 National Policy on Skill Development which envisaged skilling of 50 crore Indians by 2022, a virtually impossible task. (AGENCIES)
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