The recent Budget 2019 made no provision for Skills or Institutionalisation of it. A young population must be skilled adequately for either self-employment or to provide employment for others. Past five years have seen several trained, but either a job deficit or a skill deficit appears to have derailed the outcomes. Has the most touted mission of Skills failed the Country? Or has the implementation failed? These and many more similar questions need credible answers to resurrect a great idea. The spirit of skilling seems to have been lost somewhere. NSQF has been a wasted idea.
Rubrics of skills follows two distinct groups. Those who are in college, about 20 to a hundred, and the others who never have seen a college or for that matter even a school. A student who completes a degree or a diploma eventually finds an employment, even if under-employment. So the eighty to hundred group is the most deprived on skills and on employment.
The skill centres focussing on the first group makes a better business sense for their placement is easier. It is a moot point to debate if the placement was due to the skills imparted or was actually due to the fact that they had a diploma or a degree. Reskilling at the workplace is also a serious issue, but is in the domain of the workplace.
MSDE setup to promote skills as an alternative mode of living, found ITI’s convenient to carry the mission forward. However, more than ten thousand ITI’s had failed to deliver, as the trade based skills they imparted were terminal in nature and hence reskilling was mandatory for placements and progress. Skills are imparted through State run and private skill centres, in almost all the States, the delivery of which leaves a lot to be desired. A cursory glance through the training programs, reveals that most of them are modular in nature, trade based, traditional, not kept pace with times and limited in reach. Acceptability consequently is limited. Job roles that define these modules, have been far removed from reality. A job role of an organic grower or of a quality seed grower or of a soil sampler collector, in the agriculture sector, or a job role of a measurement checker, or a finisher in the Apparel Sector, or a brake specialist, or a clutch specialist or an AC specialist in the automotive sector, or a craft baker in the food processing sector, are all cases in point. In the name of creating a multitude of job roles, Jobs have been a given a goby. As on date 37 Sector Skill Councils are operational. There are over 600 corporate representatives in the Governing Councils of the SSCs. With so many industry representatives, it is a concern and difficult to comprehend as to why Jobs and Job roles are disconnected.
Training imparted on these job roles of 100 to 250 hrs will probably entail a certificate and also reimbursement from the centre, but will it fetch them a meaningful job? A judicious mix of modules would have made some sense. Industry metamorphosing into completely automated drive has put additional pressure on the training centres which have not kept pace with the industry requirements. A paltry 3 laks out of 40.5 laks trained under the PMKVY tells its own story. Whereas education should have provided the bridge, a complete MHRD disconnect has only acerbated the implementation paradigm that has no pathways. RPL seems to be only on paper with very limited skill examiners and no clarity of purpose. More serious question is, in what way the MSDE skills imparted different from what the ITI’s are doing. The larger question of what NSQF is and the finer nuances of it.
Bachelors in Vocational Education instituted in 2013 as an aspirational proposition, that helps institutionalising skills in education was promoted through a funding of 10 million Rs in each case, benefitting more than 125 institutions. The skill bureau of UGC informs this as a three-year program after XII and an equivalent level 5, with the curriculum in the ratio of 40:60 as general vs skills education. Treating as any other Bachelors program, with no stress on skills that were required at levels 1 to 4 and no clarity on skills at level 5 to seven, was a disaster. Further, lack of defining the interplay between skills that are sector specific and education, a 40:60 division left at the mercy of colleges, rendered the entire program redundant. Since the implementation leaves no scope of lateral or vertical pathways, the program itself is currently rendered comatose. Several colleges have effectively closed the B. Voc programs. In fact any skills running college, should have been a community college for the period it runs such programs.
The skills implemented at various levels under the current framework are for varying hours of duration at each certification level across sectors and certified by the SSC’s, leading to different credits at similar certification levels across different sectors. Accumulation of such credits for the award of a degree or diploma by a university is not tenable since the number of credits would be different for each sector for the same degree or diploma. All this would compound the disaggregation that already is plaguing the system.
The skills paradigm must include education, albeit different for both the groups of skill seekers and must lead to the award of a degree or a diploma if they so choose, learning at their own pace and be awarded when sufficient credits accumulate. Multipoint entry and exit, recognition of RPL were all its USP’s. Alternatively, a predominantly skills channel would have been available for dropouts. The current administrative and operative structure is not designed to handle this. A National Skills University that can enable this and also set standards of skilling is also not forthcoming. The absence of a credible LMIS is only aiding some freewheeling job roles that are easy to skill but have little employment potential.
The current skills paradigm cantered on NSDC could go the ITI way if several of the concerns are not addressed leading to the argument that skills must be institutionalised with education. Further it could easily become a super regulator for skills without the requisite wherewithal to implement, a malice afflicting many of our current regulators. A course correction is called for even if late.