Skill Development - scope

guides , facilitates and controls
vocational educations through
a set of Institutes known as
‘Polytechnics’ and school level vocational
education through both
formal and informally run schools
and institutes. This ministry has
been essentially envisioned to
come out with National Vocational
Education Qualification Framework
(NVEQF) to promote interchangeability
and mobility of
students among vocational and
formal educational qualifications.
DGE&T has also been
working towards development of
National Vocational Qualification
Framework (NVQF) to achieve
same purposes.
There are a few private organizations,
who have entered
into educational fields including
vocational education to train
people largely located in distant
areas and who are disadvantaged
in terms of this or that way.
Examples of such private enlightened
corporate include Educomp,
Bharti, Manipal Education, IL&FS
etc. These organizations are entering
into collaboration both
with Indian and foreign organizations
to explore opportunities
for training and development in
new areas. In addition, a number
of international organizations are
also making strategic collaborations
with Industrial associations
and other industrial bodies to facilitate
skill development in the
country.
Given the above landscape of
skill development efforts made
in the country during the current
millennium, public sector organizations,
which contribute about
60 % of employment in the organized
sector, have comparatively,
till now, paid less attention to
skill development under the new
dispensation as outlined above.
Progress towards targets
Though impressive targets have
been systematically deployed to
various departments/ ministries/
organizations, progress towards
achievement of such targets has
not been as steady as expected.
It is reported that the NSDC and
various ministries met about 16.5
percent of their skilling targets for
2012-13 stating a little differently,
17 ministries which are to achieve
targets of 8.4 million during 2012
– 13, actual achievements made
by them have been only around
1.2 million. Grassroots level survey
recently made and also anecdotal
evidences do indicate
that quality of training in many
ITI’s/VTP’s has not been up to the
mark. There are several problems
and limitations faced, which are
linked with various segments of
“Skill Development Value Chain”
as shown in the chart.
The above discussions show that
efforts for skill development are
to be intensified to a great extent
and many of the problems and
limitations faced by field level
skill development organizations
have to be seriously attended
to. Public Sector organizations
could act meaningfully for such
intensification and improvement
activities.
Present Role of Indian
Public Sector
Central Public Sector Enterprises
(CPSE) comprise of about 220 operating
autonomous bodies set
up as registered societies along
with a few number of departmental
undertakings, statutory
corporations, and government
owned companies. These CPSE’s
have been playing very vital roles
in the development of Indian
Economy. During 1970s and 80s,
many of these public sector organizations
have built up robust
infrastructures for training and
development of their employees
and have been very active in providing
both class room and onthe-
job training to build up skills
in relevant areas concerned with
their respective working. Good
amount of skilled personnel developed
in such public sector
training infrastructures not only
find their employment in their
respective organizations, but also
practically in all the public sector
organizations in the country.
However, as it stands today,
public sector is no longer seen
as training and development facilitator
and so an employment
provider. In fact, it has experienced
a continuous decline in
employment since mid-90s. Most
of these organizations have been
found to be growing in terms of
market performance but employment
growth saw a deceleration.
Many of these organizations are
found to have shrunk their infrastructures
on training and development
so as to ensure increasing
rate of productivity and profitability.
However, with increasing
competition, many of these
CPSE’s are now undertaking several
expansion projects and carrying
out operational reforms. So,
many of them have again been
paying greater attention on skill
development.
During current skill development
phase, public sector organizations
are found to have been undertaking
such activities as a part
of corporate social responsibilities
(CSR). On an average, about
5-10% of allotted CSR funds are
being spent on skill development
40 Kaleidoscope July 2013