Year End Review 2019: Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship

The Ministry has put special emphasis in 2019 on Convergence, Increased Scale, Meeting Aspirations and Improved Quality.

Initiatives Related to Convergence

  • The National Skill Development Mission (NSDM): It aims to create convergence across sectors and States in terms of skill training activities.
    • It also aims to expedite decision making across sectors to achieve skilling at scale with speed and standards.
  • Skill India Portal: It is a strong IT Platform that was launched to converge the skilling data of various Central Ministries, State Governments, Private Training Providers and Corporates on a single platform.

Initiatives for Increasing Scale

  • Industrial Training Centres (ITIs): Aims to expand and modernize the existing Long-Term Training ecosystem in India.
  • Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY): Aims to provide free skill training avenues to youths of India.
  • Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Kendra (PMKK): These are the state-of-the-art Model Training Centres envisaged to create benchmark institutions that demonstrate aspirational value for competency-based skill development training.
  • Recognition of Prior Learning: It was launched to recognize the prior skills acquired by individuals. It is one of the key components of Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY).
  • Skill Management and Accreditation of Training Centres (SMART): It provides a single window IT application that focuses on the accreditation, grading, Affiliation and Continuous monitoring of the Training Centres (TC) in the skill ecosystem.
  • SANKALP: Its focus is on district-level skilling ecosystem through convergence and coordination. It is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme which is collaborated with the World Bank.
    • It aims to implement the mandate of the National Skill Development Mission (NSDM).
  • STRIVE: The main focus of the scheme is to improve the performance of ITIs. Skills Strengthening for Industrial Value Enhancement (STRIVE) scheme is a World Bank assisted-Government of India project with the objective of improving the relevance and efficiency of skills training provided through Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) and apprenticeships.
  • Pradhan Mantri YUVA Yojana (Yuva Udyamita Vikas Abhiyan): It aims at creating an enabling ecosystem for Entrepreneurship development through Entrepreneurship education and training; Advocacy and easy access to entrepreneurship support network and Promoting social enterprises for inclusive growth.

Meeting Aspirations

  • Kaushalyacharya Awards: are launched in a bid to recognize the contribution made by skill trainers and to motivate more trainers to join the Skill India Mission.
  • National Entrepreneurship Awards 2019: the awards were presented to honor outstanding contributions in entrepreneurship development. This is in line with promoting entrepreneurship amongst the youth so as to create more job givers than job seekers in the nation.
  • Skill Saathi Counseling Program: MSDE also launched the Skill Saathi program which was aimed to sensitize the youth of the country on various avenues under Skill India Mission and increase the aspiration for skill development.
  • Offering vocational courses and Working closely with CBSE to develop “Hubs of Excellence in Skills” for school students, MSDE will introduce high quality, technology-oriented skill programs to schools.
  • Embedded apprenticeship degree program: MSDE and MHRD have together rolled out the SHREYAS program where apprenticeship degree programs in retail, media and logistics are embedded into degree programs such as BA/BSc/BCom (Professional) courses in higher educational institutions.
  • India Institute of Skills (IIS): In order to bring a certain standard and stature in terms of quality and quantity to skills, MSDE recently announced setting up of the Indian Institute of Skills (IIS) in Mumbai which would be to the stature and repute of IIMs and IITs of the country.

Improved Quality

  • Reforms to Apprenticeship Act of 1961: The ministry introduced a wide range of reforms to the Apprenticeship Act of 1961, to make it significantly easier for industry to take on much needed apprentices.
    • Increasing upper limit for engaging apprentices from 10% to 15%;
    • Decreasing the size limit of an establishment with mandatory obligation to engage apprentices from 40 to 30;
    • Payment of stipend for 1st year has been fixed rather than linking it to minimum wages;
    • 10% to 15% hike in stipend for 2nd and 3rd year to apprentice;
    • Duration of apprenticeship training for optional trade can be from 6 months to 36 months.
  • Dual System of Training: The MSDE is also scaling up the ITIs Dual System Training (DST) scheme to at least 1000 ITIs. The DST is a model of training inspired by the German method and provides industry exposure through industry led trainings to students of the various ITIs.
  • MSDE has launched new age courses which include Internet of Things – Smart Healthcare; Internet of Things – Smart cities; 3D printing; Drone pilots; Solar Technicians and Geo Informatics among many others.
  • Formation of District Skill Committees: In order to get to the grass roots of the country with its various reforms and empower every citizen, the ministry has formed District Skill Committees (DSC) in all Districts as part of its Aspirational Skilling Abhiyaan under the Sankalp program, which is funded by World Bank.
  • Mahatma Gandhi National Fellowship (MNGF): MSDE has also constituted the Mahatma Gandhi National Fellowship (MNGF) for 75 districts across 6 states.
  • Indian Skill Development Services (ISDS): To ensure that the skilling of the country’s youth gets the importance that it deserves, the government has carved out an altogether new administrative service. The Indian Skill Development Services (ISDS) has been created through a notification by the MSDE.
  • Community mentors called Business Sakhis: Based on the learnings from various schemes and programmes introduced for women’s entrepreneurship promotion, in 2018, NIESBUD in association with UNDP, NIRDPR and TISS jointly developed a new concept and system that is providing mentorship support services of both psycho-social and business supports through a cadre of community mentors called Business Sakhis (Biz-Sakhis).