Dr Batool Fatima, Head – Community Connect, Jana Urban Foundation
There are three very important aspects to employability and empowerment which need attention.
First is education, it is extremely important to strategically embed employability skills in curriculum right from high school. This should include social development, ability and willingness to accept new developments in technology and most importantly meta-competence. These skills are highly required for all the students irrespective of gender, age, language etc. and we need to ensure our curriculum is directed towards the same.
Secondly from employability perspective, particularly for the underserved section of the society it is very important to understand and include basic skills like literacy and numeracy in any course that they undergo which is missing in link in QP and curriculum targeted at this audience as of today. It is extremely important to have RPL at the beginning of the course to understand literacy and numeracy levels and include the same via bridge course if required. I am hoping that this should be included in PMKVY as soon as possible so that the impact can be analyzed soon.
Thirdly, the power to catalyze social and economic change in India lies not only in skill development and employment but our ability to set up enterprises by enabling financial literacy and empowering the underserved sections of the society. We need to build capacity by training in targeted trades required for micro enterprises. Larger portion of society today is self-employed and teaching them requisite business skills is the need of the hour. Skill enhancement of both men and women so that they are able to set up micro enterprises, understand market linkage, value chains, business plans with secured loans/grants etc. will not only make them self-reliant but will encourage livelihood for many others as well. Again evaluating generation of employment via self-employment needs to be part of impact evaluation for any courses directed towards self-employment.
