India has to provide skill training to 109 million new entrants into the job markets and 460 million people to upscale their skills by 2020, said Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Monday.
Badal, after chairing a meeting of NITI Aayog sub-group of Chief Ministers on skill development, said: “The country needs to provide skill training to 109 million new entrants in to the job markets and around 460 million people to be re-skilled and up-skilled by 2020.”
“Now the time has come that Right to Skill be legalised since we have already empowered our citizens with the Right to Information (RTI), Right to Food and Right to Education,” he said.
Badal said that every youth must be skilled to enable them to compete in a global village.
While stating that India today is a youngest country because 65 per cent of the population is below the age of 35, a NITI Aayog official admitted that our country faces a serious problem of unemployment especially amongst the youths, ladies and low strata of the society.
Unlike in countries like Korea, Japan and Germany whose population is 80 per cent skilled, Badal said that India’s skilled population is only about 12 per cent.
“I think the per capita income of our country is low because our nation is unskilled nation, our country is far behind other countries in skill development,” he said.
Spelling out the focus priorities that each states ought to take, Badal said that recommendations to the CEO has to be submitted and specific on sectors where there are potentials for skilled employment.
He also highlighted the need to mobilise targeted population particularly the rural youths, the weaker section and women to make them aware of skill training and motivate them to take advantage to take skill training programmes.
“We have to do lots of home work to convince them that skill is more important than even service in Government jobs,” he said adding that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has constituted this board of Chief Ministers to go in details about how to go and make this nation a skilled nation.
Badal has set June 25 as the deadline for the State Governments to submit their views and suggestions.
NITI Aayog CEO Sindhushree Khullar also expressed the need to speed up the recommendation process and expressed concern that only few States have responded in writing on the same.
The Chief Ministers are expected to recommend measures to NITI Aayog on how to deal with shortage of skilled manpower in production lines and also to propose measures to expand outreach of skill programmes particularly in demographically advantageous States.
Badal on Monday chaired the NITI Aayog sub-group meeting in Shillong, which was attended by his counterparts from Meghalaya Mukul Sangma and Arunachal Pradesh Nabam Tuki.
“It is an important meeting. As you know the greater problem of the country is unemployment,” said Badal.
He said that this board of CMs “will go into details about how to make this nation a skilled one and we are gathering the views of different Chief Ministers on this line”.
The CMs of Assam, Tripura, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and Meghalaya are members of the sub-group constituted by the governing council of the NITI Aayog earlier this year.
The sub-group was tasked to address issues pertaining to human resources, especially youth, and work on scientific methods on moving towards creating a pool of skilled manpower.