Friday 03 September 2010 Government 2.0: The Road Ahead
India to set up 1,500 more ITIs

With a view to harness skill potential across the country 1,500 more ITI and 50,000 Skills Development Centres will be set up under the proposed ‘Skills Development Mission’of the Government of India.

New Delhi: With a view to harness skill potential across the country 1,500 more Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) and 50,000 Skills Development Centres will be set up under the proposed ‘Skills Development Mission'of the Government of India.<!--more-->

Addressing the Skills World 2008' summit organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Aspire, Ministry of Labour and Employment's Employment and Training Director General Sharda Prasad added that the Ministry has embarked on setting up Sectoral Councils as part of the government's Skills Development Policy.

The government wants to play the role of a facilitator in this field, Prasad said, inviting the industry to join hands with it to create a road map for solving this problem.

He said that skills development and unemployment is a core concern not just in India but worldwide and Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) are the key to realising India's vast potential in this area and achieving socially equitable and inclusive growth.

"From a global perspective India is doing better than it thinks its doing in the field of HR, but it needs to build on it for HR today is problem of scale," Wharton HR Director Peter Cappelli said while speaking at the summit.

He further added that while education providers need to gear up to provide the needed skillsets, the employers need to invest more in training and right hiring.

Fortis Healthcare CEO and MD Shivinder Mohan Singh said that India is on a scorching economic rise for the past few years and the only bottleneck can be not having enough people to do what India needs to do.

Stressing that India's young population is its demographic dividend and should not allow it to become a demographic divide, Singh said that skills development is a concern not just of industry and GDP but of society, governance and growth.

"Only 39.5 per cent of graduates in India are employable and the challenge is to bridge the HR gap by providing skills training to the other 60 per cent," Aspire Founder and CEO Amit Bhatia said while launching its India Skills Report Card 2008 at the summit.

The Aspire CEO suggested that India needs to apply supply chain principles to achieve the talent of demand targets and achieve a more equitable social and economic model, besides setting up of Special Education Zones to meet the growing demand.

Meanwhile, the government has given its approval for setting up of coordinated mechanisms encompassing different public and private initiatives with the statement of Vision, Mandate and scope of activities.

The coordinated action would aim at creating a pool of skilled personnel in appropriate numbers with adequate skills in line with the employment requirements across the entire economy.
—iGovernment Bureau

Skills can be developed only by working as apprentice with experienced persons. 92 % of all our working hand sin India are in unorganized sector and have learnt the skills on their own. We need to organize logistics for management of massive apprenticeship program. Please contact me if interested in participating is starting such open ITI all over India. We need 25 Lakh such training centers to produce few crore skilled persons every year as once center can hardly train 10 to 20 persons.

Not only should the skills that are being imparted meet the needs of the industry, it should also help them be healthy and responsible citizens. While developing entrepreneurial skills, information and skills related to avoiding peer pressure, substance abuse, alchohol, and prevention of HIV/AIDS should also be provided.

It's an excellent step. But I hope proper attention might have been taken about starting latest trades & course content. Because the traditional trade's ITIs may not be much of use rather an increase in number of unemployed so called skilled labour.

Its not a matter of numbers alone - while reach is critical the Govt has to ensure that the new ITI's do provide the requisite skill sets the industry demands. The Govt should seriously evaluate and partner with the indutry to make the curriculum in line with latest trends and technologies as well ensure global certifications rather than being confined just to the Indian scenrio.

The model of enhancing vocational skills, which CII has decided to implement for India requires a better assessment. German systems of enhancing the vocational skills have been the universally accepted best models. Based on these EU has adopted the two streams of education namely Da Vinci stream and Einstein stream. But every country has to find its own system to suit its local environments and systems. Considering the more open and democratic society of India, the American model of VoTech schools is worth a consideration.
Indian education system has followed the British model which gives a great importance to award of a paper certificate/degree by a centralized examining body and insists on very well regimented laid down subjects and syllabi. The American system on the other hand allows a far greater freedom in choice of subjects and contents to be followed for any course. Indian Government had launched a big scheme of ITIs many decades ago. These have almost turned out to be mere paper certificate awarding institutions. On the basis of my personal experience as an engineer in the Indian industry, spanning more than five decades without any hesitation I will say with full confidence that by and large the product of our ITIs is very inadequately equipped. CII initiative will be able to change the ground realities is extremely uncertain.
I had on my personal initiative for my own interest made a study of the American Vocational training system of the last hundred years, and feel that if we are serious about taking India forward as an industrially developed society, we will have to develop a more open perception of what is lacking in our present systems and how to improve upon them, rather than repeat the same mistakes over again.

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