There is no doubt that there is a need to scale skill development in India. The Government has started many initiatives in this regard such as the Skill Development Mission and setting up of NSDC, and there is also a lot of fund allocation for various skill development projects. However, the last three years has seen the quality of candidates and training depleting. Although there are many training institutions and assessment empanelled by the government, quality remains a problem as trained candidates continue to find it difficult to get a job.
Though the Government has allocated a huge amount of money on skill development initiatives, unfortunately most of them are only addressing the issue in a typical formal vocational training style, serving the organized sector workforce. More than 90 per cent of India’s workforce is in the unorganized sector, which is still unaddressed. The skill development mission needs to device methods that will focus on the huge unorganized workforce suiting to their needs. When talking about skill development, India requires to focus on both engineering skills and soft skills. The training investment for engineering skills is high and therefore not affordable by all players. While there are many players entering the soft skills training model, there are not sufficient companies which have taken charge of addressing the technical skill gap.