India International Skill Development Summit & Exhibition (IISDSE 2016) – A Report

Skill development in Uttar Pradesh (UP)

Speakers: R C Gupta, UPSDM, Government of UP; Prof. Abhishek Mishra (Honourable Minister for Vocational Education and Skill Development, Government of UP)

R C Gupta began his address by describing how the UP government is focused on skilling the youth according to their preference and inborn talent. He reflected on the lack of good trainers and the need for technology based training for Training Of Trainer programs, introduction of Smart Classes to overcome trainer deficiency to address scale, standardization and quality of skill development. The focus is on offering training in traditional arts, crafts and furniture clusters and the need to preserve and grow the tradition through global markets. This applies to crafts like Chikankari, Pottery and crafts from Muradabad and Saharanpur.

Prof Abhishek Mishra looked back on how skilling has been a long journey in UP, with a huge economy with high unemployment, how UPSDM could be a bridge between the demand and supply of skilled workforce. Being the first umbrella organization in skill development in India, UPSDM took up the task of creating an opportunity to skill 220 million people and 4.6 million registered for UPSDM programs. The challenge was to make them employable, empower them and inspire them for entrepreneurship. To mention other highlights:

• The need for localised industry compliant courses – the example of courses in Perfumery for local youth and how they got trained in France at the Grasse Institute of Perfurmery.
• The state has many firsts to its credit including the first state to grant equivalence to class 10 and class 12 students to move to the university.
• The dire need to create pathways on the lines of community colleges in the USA and offer apprenticeship program in partnership with private sector

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Skill development in Maharashtra

Speakers: R. Vimala (CEO, Ministry of State Rural Livelihood Mission – MSRLM Govt. of Maharashtra); Megha Phansalkar (World bank Consultant, Social entrepreneur and Founder of Tisser); George Bernard Shaw (State Mission Director, Govt. of Maharashtra)

R. Vimala stressed upon the need to give utmost priority to rural India in skill development by creating opportunities for villages and small towns. She shared stories about the inclusive approaches from the government of Maharashtra in enabling sustainable rural livelihoods with backward linkages.

• This is done through the “Mission Maharashtra Unbound” for rural poverty alleviation scheme with the habit of saving promotion of agriculture-allied sectors like handicrafts.

• The government is keen on skilling MSMEs as it generates positive impact in terms of productivity enhancement, cost reduction, risk mitigation and cluster development. This is expected to result in self-employment and enterprises

George Bernard Shaw spoke about the partnership with Dheya for conducting train the trainer programs so that trainers can inspire and mentor the rural youth. This would also help the youth in choosing the right course, explore new opportunities, one-to-one counselling, understand themselves better.

Skill development in Jharkhand

Speakers: Mr Ajoy Kumar Singh, Secretary, Govt of Jharkhand; Mr Rajiv Ranjan, Director – JSDMS, Govt of Jharkhand

The state has favourable policy for “Make in Jharkhand” with many initiatives to attract investment under the visionary leadership of the chief minister. Here are some key points from the talk:

• There are talks with the private sector to catalyse the ecosystem by creating a demand for skilled workforce and train and certify youth as per the job markets
• Though Jharkhand is well-known as a land of forests, waterfalls, minerals, natural resources it also has Jamshedpur, the first industrial city of India and the first steel plant
• The industrial history of Jharkhand is 100 years old with coal and steel plants. The state has tremendous potential for investment in mines and coal sector

Skill development in Sikkim

Speaker: Anita Gupta, OSD, Government of Sikkim

The 100% organic state of Sikkim has a dedicated portal for skills and jobs called Skill Young India. The state is seeking investments and also guidance for designing a curriculum for skill development in ecotourism. One of the key initiatives from the government is the livelihood schools in every constituency with 42 of them, offering 3 to 6 months courses with more than 14 training partners. The state also conducts job melas, end-to-end linkages and marketing of rural produce and strives for aspiration linked salaries. There’s also an effort at converging the state schemes with the central schemes.