Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken a bold initiative in putting skill development in the forefront of our strategy of economic development. The global market will reward the country that produces goods of good quality at low cost. An improvement in the skills of our people will enable them to make larger number of goods of good quality. For example, a tailor will be able to produce larger number of garments. Many small industries cannot pay the high salaries demanded by these skilled persons. They are somehow managing with less skilled persons. As a result, their cost of production is high. The availability of larger number of skilled workers will spread the skills over larger area and help increase the growth rate in the economy. This will also lead to reduced cost of production. A skilled electrician is today available at a salary of, say, 15k per month. An increase in the availability of skilled electricians will lead to a reduction in their salaries and also an increase in their output.
The government has been long aware of this problem. Diverse organisations of the government such as Council for Advancement of People’s Action and Rural Technologies (CAPART) and Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) have been running such programmes for decades. These programmes have largely failed for two reasons. The first reason for this is that the young are not interested in actually learning the skills. They are more interested in obtaining certificates that enable them to get government jobs. No wonder a recent opening for 400 peons saw 287 PhDs and 75k postgraduates applying. These large numbers have certificates without skills. The youth believe that they will be able to get a government job by paying bribes. Their limited interest in enrolling in educational institutions is to get a certificate that enables them to apply for the job. This disinterest on part of the students in actual learning suits the wheeler-dealers. A friend who has been associated with KVIC told me that the organisation had provided training to nearly 50 lakh youth in the last six decades but only a few thousand were actually working in the trades in which they had received training. Many participants joined the training because it provided a small stipend and free food.
A large industry of fake educational institutions has been spawned. They take fees from students and give certificates without providing any education. A person running an Industrial Training Institute (ITI) in Faizabad District of UP said that of the 55-odd ITIs, barely 2 have one or two teachers. All the remaining ones have only hollow offices. Crux of the problem is that the prized Government jobs do not require either skill or education. It requires a certificate hence there is no interest among the students to obtain education. That has led to the development of a huge “certificate industry” that goes by the official name of vocational education.
The youth believe that they will be able to get a government job by paying bribes. Their limited interest in enrolling in educational institutions is to get a certificate that enables them to apply for the job. This disinterest on part of the students in actual learning suits the wheeler-dealers.
Literature on the topic says that there is a mismatch in the skills that are imparted and those that are in demand. This is a false lead because the problem of incompetent certificate holders is present in every sector. Another suggestion being made is that skill development programmes are being run by 73 departments spread across 20 ministries. The Ministry of Skill Development is expected to coordinate these activities. It is like coordinating the activities of 73 thieves!
“Coordination” will not create interest among the students to learn. Another suggestion is that industry must be given incentives to train more people. This will not work. The work of an industrialist is to produce goods and sell them. He cannot afford to divert his limited energies in other activities. I am told of an organisation in Pune that provided skills and did not give certificates or degrees to the students. But they ensured that about one half of the time was spent by the students in industries. Industries too were happy because they were getting cheap workers. The result was that nearly 90 percent of their students got jobs even before they completed the course. This shows that there is neither a dearth of students who want to learn; nor a shortage of industries that are willing to give training. The problem is that this type of genuine activity is far behind. There is no programme by the government to encourage such activities. The limelight is grabbed by the certificate industry. In fact, the certificate industry felt threatened by the success of such genuine teachers and they painted this genuine work as that of quacks and had it closed down. Similarly the age-old tradition of the child learning skills like pottery has been killed by Nobel-winning crusaders like Kailash Satyarthi. Large numbers of youth who would have been earning a livelihood are consequently running around with certificates!
The way forward is to stamp out the certificate industry. This requires that the salaries of the government servants be cut by one half. That will remove the charm of government jobs. There will be no takers for fake certificates then. The second step is to pay the skill development money by attainments rather than by activities. Presently, payments are made for undertaking a course. Whether the course led to the participants getting a job or starting their own business has no relationship with the payment.
The payments for skill development programmes should be split. About 25 percent of the money may be paid at the time of undertaking activity and the remaining should be tied to the number of participants getting jobs. The third step is to revamp the ITI and polytechnic system of the country and make it practical training oriented. The present day teachers working in this system are themselves the product of the certificate system. They have no skills themselves. They should be required to undergo practical training and the same must be tested. The time spent in field training in vocational courses in the developed countries is more than 60 percent against a bare two percent in India. The graduates from these institutions will get skills if they are placed in industries during training. It is necessary to relax the minimum wage laws to make it attractive for the industries to train these students. The fourth step is to exclude training-oriented work from the ambit of child labour laws. The most important agenda of skill development will move forward only if the government liberates skill development from the stranglehold of bureaucracy.
Author was formerly Professor of Economics at IIM Bengaluru
