New Delhi: Yogesh Kumar, 25, knows the value of a good training module. After all, it took him from a Rs 5,000 salary to Rs 20,000 in three years.
A four-month training at a Skill India centre landed him an internship where he was paid Rs 5,000; this was followed by a job that took him to the Rs 15,000-mark. It took him one more switch to reach the Rs 20,000 figure. His father, 54, a factory worker for over two decades, is still a daily wager.
As the employment issue comes up in the ongoing Lok Sabha election campaign, India’s skills and apprenticeship programme is once again in focus. The 15-year-old National Skill Development Mission (NSDM) got rechristened and rebooted under PM Narendra Modi as Skill India Mission.
Kumar and 30 others opted for the Field Technician Networking and Storage course at Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) — a group of specialised training centres under the Skill India umbrella — centre in 2020. Considering his financial limitations, he admitted, it was his best shot. He wanted his brother too to take up the same course. But the centre is now shut. The facility at Delhi’s Preet Vihar is one among many that have shut down across India, raising questions about the ambitious Skill India programme that has had the blessings of two governments over 15 years — first UPA, then NDA.
As the Congress party manifesto promised an ambitious apprenticeship programme as a first-job guarantee for India’s unemployed youth, the government sent out a notice within days, asking companies about their apprenticeship compliance. India’s unemployment problem is widely regarded as a product of the employment deficit.
But the skill centres in Delhi are ailing with students dropping out. Lack of equipment, misuse of funds by centres, delayed implementation of PMKVY 3.0, and lack of placement support are other problems ailing the programme.
Employment generation is very important for Indian economy. Many young people are entering the working age on monthly basis. BJP understands the problem of under employment. All these issues have to be tackled at a very high speed
–Gopal Krishna Agarwal, national spokesperson of the BJP
High fees for vocational training at private institutes has meant that most youngsters don’t have the option to take that route.
“I couldn’t afford to go to a private institution that charges lakhs. I found out about the course online. And it was helpful. But I can’t go further in my career with whatever training I received from the centre. To grow more, I will have to do some more courses to do better in the IT sector,” said Kumar.
Kumar is among lakhs of underemployed or unemployed youth in India whose carriers aren’t taking the flight the way they had envisioned despite them taking part in Modi’s Skill India Mission.
Latest data shows India is going through an unemployment crisis. And with the country in the middle of a seven-phase election festival, the chorus of joblessness and underemployment is unmissable amid the noise of polarisation at the hustings. The skill development plan, projected by both Congress and the BJP as an antidote to the unemployment problem, has its own troubles.
“Employment generation is very important for Indian economy. Many young people are entering the working age on monthly basis. BJP understands the problem of under employment. All these issues have to be tackled at a very high speed,” said Gopal Krishna Agarwal, national spokesperson of the BJP.
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The pandemic gap
“Skill India is not merely to fill pockets but to bring a sense of self-confidence among the poor,” PM Modi had said at the launch of the Mission in July 2015. Nearly a decade later, the interest of country’s youth in the programme championed by the prime minister himself seems to be dwindling.
Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship is adopting strict attendance monitoring and making sure all information related to the students be on the portal. But that is bringing impact on student retention.
“Strict monitoring of attendance has led to students dropping out,” said an official in the MSDE on condition of anonymity.
Officials cited Covid-19 as the biggest reason for declining interest in the flagship programme. However, the ministry claimed to have utilised this period to identify emerging skills that are relevant in the post-Covid market
Officials cited Covid-19 as the biggest reason for declining interest in the flagship programme. However, the ministry claimed to have utilised this period to identify emerging skills that are relevant in the post-Covid market, including skills aligned to Industry 4.0 such as AI, 3D Printing, Machine Learning, Drone Technology etc.
“Nationwide lockdowns and restrictions resulted in the temporary closure of training centres, hindering the enrolment and training of candidates. Additionally, the delayed implementation of PMKVY 3.0 impacted training activities, creating a gap in training initiatives,” said MSDE in a written response to ThePrint.
Even Kumar got his internship post-training through his teachers’ contact.
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Same same but different
Skill Centres operating in Peeragarhi and Preet Vihar offer hair styling, documentation assistant, field technician and networking storage courses among others. But it doesn’t automatically guarantee jobs.
Thirty-three-year-old Ranjana Devi trained as a beautician in 2021 at the Jan Shikshan Sansthan in Delhi’s Peeragarhi. She claimed she was the best student of her batch. But at the end of the six-month course, she remained jobless. Devi, a mother of two, had hoped to support her family. Today, she is among those lakhs of apprentices who have the skill but don’t know what to do with it.
“I should have gotten a job after this course,” she said, nearly three years after the completion of her course.
But it’s not just the centres that can be blamed for not providing placements. Even the market forces are letting them down. Ranjana’s attempt at opening her own beauty parlour with an investment of Rs 40,000 didn’t bear fruit either. A poor footfall of customers meant she had to shut shop few months after opening it.
“Now I am doing some stitching and parlor work at my home only and looking for a full-time job,” said Devi, a resident of Kamardin Nagar, Nangloi.
Skill India was to become the catchment programme that would attract the country’s growing army of untrained youth and make them market-ready. But unemployment numbers indicate things aren’t moving at a fast pace. The latest data from the International Labour Organisation shows that the share of youngsters with secondary and higher education in the total unemployed pool has almost doubled from 35.2 per cent in 2000 to 65.7 per cent in 2022.
Covid meant skill centres were severely impacted. And no special support from the ministry made matters worse. After the pandemic, new guidelines were launched with strict rules. There was some delay in the payment to trainers as well.
But the Ministry has claimed that the funds was not even utilised in certain pockets.
“While efforts have been made to allocate funds to states under the skill development schemes, challenges in efficient utilisation have led to unspent amounts in certain regions,” said the ministry in a written reply.
The latest data from the International Labour Organisation shows that the share of youngsters with secondary and higher education in the total unemployed pool has almost doubled from 35.2 per cent
in 2000 to 65.7 per cent in 2022
Both governments — UPA and NDA — had their own vision for this programme.
“What was created by the UPA government had a long vision. It was gaining momentum but the government changed. In the initial years, the present government only criticised the work done by the UPA government in the field of skilling the youth,” said a source who has been part of the skilling programmes under both UPA and NDA governments.
In 2014, the government formed the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and the UPA-era NSDC came under it just as the ITIs, Jan Shikshan Sansthan centres, etc. It was one of many flagship Modi schemes that had ‘India’ in their nomenclature —Make in India, Digital India, Startup India, Stand Up India among others. It aimed to train 300 million people by the year 2022.
Agarwal admitted self-employment and micro and small sectors are the priority sectors for BJP’s growth model. “There are several schemes which help in the manufacturing sector, whether it is PLI, Mudra loan or Vishwakarma Yojana and street vendor support system, cooperative sector and even women’s self-help groups,” he added.
The Modi government, said the expert quoted above, is following the exact plan which was set by the UPA government. It has tied up with corporates, NGOs and educational institutions. The government communicated with people on the ground to make them aware of the programmes.
“The Department of Labour and Employment was divided into Employment and Skill. Most of the programmes were transferred to the ministry. The current government focused on the bottom of the pyramid. The centres and the trainers got busy in fulfilling the targets given by the ministry and the goals of skilling and providing jobs got lost in between,” said the source quoted above.
However, experts argue that skilling is work in progress and even engineering or medical degrees don’t guarantee a job. The bigger problem, they say, is that the outdated and largely bookish education system that is not job-oriented for the 21st century workforce.
According to a Business Standard report, only 22.2 per cent of certified candidates were placed under all phases of PMKVY as of 14 March 2023. In the second phase of PMKY, the placement hit the peak with 23.4 per cent landing a job. But in phase three, it went down to 10.1 per cent.
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Running a skill centre
Shikha Singh sits in her office in Peeragarhi, holding a few sheets of paper in her hand. It is a list of around 260 courses sent by the MSDE. She has the herculean task of picking which courses she can execute at her skill centre.
In the past 14 years, Singh, 39 has up-skilled thousands of women and men but not without the added challenges of running the centre.
Finding a good teacher at a minimum wage, educating the students about digitalisation of administrative work and managing everything within the budget, she stressed, is a tough ask.
With the limited budget, she can only run courses which require less money. Which means she can’t have big machines, or hire well-skilled trainers. She has chosen Embroidery Machine Operator, Helper Electrician, Assistant Dress Makers, etc as the courses she would offer, leaving skills such as Packaging, Salesperson, Solar PV Project Helper, etc.
But some of the bigger and older skill centres such as the National Skill Training Institute in Delhi run year-long courses, including Basic Cosmetology, Office Management, Dress Making etc.
“As of now, we used to get money from the government before the batch completed its course. But as per the new rules, we will get the money only after the course is over. And that too only for those who have successfully completed the certification,” said Shikha Singh.
“We get around Rs 1,100 per student from the ministry. In this, we have to provide equipment and products for training, pay the teachers, and electricity bills and manage everything,” she added.
The per student budget at PMKVY centres is nearly Rs 6,000 which offers courses such as Automotive Service Technician, Healthcare, Food Processing etc.
However, ministry officials allege funds diversion by some of these skill centres. “Some institutes do not spend the allotted money on the centres. Hence, strict rules have been brought in to monitor everything digitally and make it more professional,” said an MSDE official on condition of anonymity.
Singh agreed about the diversion of funds by some centres but said, citing the new rules, that “making things difficult for others wasn’t the solution.”
Kulvinder Kaur, director of the JSS centre in Delhi’s Peeragarhi, said the survival rate of these institutes is not sustainable.
“When the scheme was launched, a lot of people invested in opening PMKVY centres. But under the project, the payment was made after the completion of the course. And if a student leaves the course two days before the end date, the centre won’t get the money from the government,” said Kaur, who runs a dozen more skill centres in Delhi.
On the skill centres shutting down, ministry officials said most of them run on demand basis. “If there is no demand in the region, there is no point running the center.”
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The politics of employment
After facing several rejections in job interviews, Sumit Kumar, a BA Programme graduate enrolled in Najafgarh for a one-year Computer Operator and Programming Assistant course. But employers continued to ignore him. He was rejected and told he wasn’t ‘suitable’.
“Right now, I am working at a computer teaching centre but looking for other job options as this is not suitable. But I keep getting rejected,” said Kumar, 27 who did his graduation through distance learning.
It is this sentiment that the Congress is trying to tap into — making promises about it in its manifesto. The party has proposed the ‘right to apprenticeship’, promising guaranteed placement at public or private firms, for all who are below 25 years of age and have a graduate degree or diploma. The manifesto also promises Rs 1 lakh stipend for a year.
“RTAP (Right To Apprenticeship) is not some bureaucratic order or programme as it is today. It is a social and economic policy vision. It is a legal right, a first in the world. Fact is that today if you randomly ask ten educated young people under age 25, seven will tell you they don’t get a job and feel hopeless and demoralised,” said Praveen Chakravarty, Chairman of the Professionals’ wing of the Congress party and a key member of its manifesto committee.
This measure has remained in the government rules for years but tardily implemented. What’s new is that there is now a promise of legal right, which builds upon Congress’ penchant for legal guarantees.
“We spent time with industry, international and Indian experts, policymakers and then designed it for our manifesto,” added Chakravarty.
Right To Apprenticeship is not some bureaucratic order or programme as it is today. It is a social and economic policy vision. It is a legal right, a first in the world. Fact is that today if you randomly ask ten educated young people under age 25, seven will tell you they don’t get a job and feel hopeless and demoralised — Praveen Chakravarty, Congress
Thirty-three-year-old Prateek Saxena who taught at the Preet Vihar centre of PMKVY from 2017 to 2022 highlighted the lack of government support at these centers vis a vis placements.
“Those who were serious about the course got the placement. But it was not the government that sent the companies, it was us who arranged it. Although the salary didn’t meet minimum wages criteria, we could do only that much,” said Saxena.
The employment question in C-suit circles is often tackled with a remorse that India doesn’t have enough skilled workforce and hence the joblessness. As the Indian economy re-enters the fast lane, the demand for skilled workforce will only go up. And workers would demand higher wages too.
“Ministry of Skill Development has taken several programmes, providing apprenticeship, skilling of the people through the toolkit. All these schemes of the government help in the development of the skill of the youth. Covid might have slowed it down but it will bounce back,” said Agarwal.
Saxena receives a lot of calls enquiring about the courses. But he has only one answer for everyone. “We are not functional anymore, I don’t know when the centre will open.”