SKILL INDIA--CHALLENGES AHEAD.

Skills and knowledge are the driving forces of economic growth and social development for any country. Countries with higher and better levels of skills adjust more effectively to the challenges and opportunities of work. As India moves progressively towards becoming a ‘knowledge economy’ it becomes increasingly important that the country should focus on advancement of skills and these skills have to be relevant to the emerging economic environment. The Planning Commission of India has estimated that around 500 million skilled persons are required by 2022 while the current capacity of the skill development program is 3.1 million. Considering issues like population growth, unplanned rural-urban migration, high school dropout rates, India is likely to witness a deficit of 5.25 million employable graduates and vocationally trained workforce in next few years. For a country that adds 12 million people to its workforce every year, less than 4 per cent have ever received any formal training. With most of the existing training infrastructures irrelevant to industry needs and a wasted human resource of the unskilled rural/urban youth due to lack of skills, the workforce readiness in India is the lowest among the developing countries in the world. Many of the youth develop, through their own creativity skills, which is not adequate. They must be supported in actual work based systems, for which the skill development must be reoriented accordingly. As skill development in a large scale takes off, implementing agencies of government agencies, private institutions, industries and other vocational training providers would be faced with challenges that come up at every phase of the skill development value chain.