Govt to incentivise States to address skill gaps

The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship plans to incentivise districts and States to collaborate with the industry to address their skill gaps, by following a hyper-local approach in a bid to transition to a future-ready workforce, a top official said on Monday. Addressing the CII Smart Manufacturing Summit 2025 here, Secretary in the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship Debashree Mukherjee said the hyper-local approach will focus on specific clusters and their planning requirements to bridge skill gaps.

“The idea is hyper-local planning to try and ensure that skill gaps at the district-level and at the division level follow investments... We are going to incentivise districts and States to plan with industries to address local needs. So, hyper-local planning to look at where are the clusters, where are our planning needs and how do we address those needs,” the secretary said.

She also mentioned that the skill development and entrepreneurship ministry was looking at AI-enabled regulatory processes to reduce compliance burdens.

The secretary further said that the Skill India Digital Hub (SIDH) and the National Career Service (NCS) portals, which are under the administrative control of the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and the Ministry of Labour and Employment, respectively, have been linked to enable mapping of the jobs with the workforce having the requisite skills using artificial intelligence (AI).

“We have the SIDH portal (Skill India Digital Hub) and labour has the NCS portal where a lot of industries are posting their job requirements. We have linked the NCS and the SIDH portals and we will in the next 15 days start sending out messages using AI to map job requirements with people who have the requisite training in the vicinity,” she said.