India’s Skill Development Mission & Demonetization- How things can go wrong?

The readers might wonder as to what is common between these two totally unrelated subjects. I am attempting to draw a parallel between both these major policy initiatives and analyse how good-intentioned schemes can go wrong on the ground.

As we all know the government in the year 2009 made this eye-popping announcement that India will skill and train and try to place 500 million youth by 2022. Later this figure was scaled down to 402 million, which again was grossly unrealistic. One expected that the groundwork that was needed to achieve this very ambitious and paradigm-changing goal would be put in motion in right earnest. Likewise, on 8th November the government announced that with immediate effect it was demonetizing INR 500 and INR 1000 notes and that the new currency would be introduced and within 50 days things would be back to normal. A paradigm-changing announcement indeed! It is a matter of careful analysis and study as to what went wrong between both these announcements and draw lessons for the future.

One expects that before making any headline-grabbing announcement adequate groundwork is initiated. In the first case of the skilling and training domain, several things needed urgent attention. Rickety infrastructure for the training delivery, the outdated Industrial Training institutes, the poorly trained instructors, the fly-by-night training mafia companies, the industry preparedness in terms of absorbing the so-called trained candidates, the inadequate and mostly irrelevant content and the list goes on and on…. And what did the government do? It set up a body called the National Skill Development Corporation. Unfortunately, the body quickly morphed into a soft loan disbursal agency and moulded itself into a typical government institution in which the average time taken to clear a proposal was anywhere between 6 to 12 months. Several world-renowned vocational education models were shown in several annual skill conferences organised by FICCI and CII. That this gave the opportunity to the big 4s to bring out several white papers that had the same theme and statistics year after year is a different matter. NSDC started a scheme named STAR which, by its own admission became a scam. While all this was happening the industry- the ultimate beneficiary of these ambitious schemes was either not involved or was silent. Then in 2016, a sudden realisation dawned that there was a great mismatch between the candidates being churned out and the job availability in the job market forcing the President of India to caution that there were not enough jobs and that if the situation goes like this it may result in social upheaval. The upshot of this is that while the original intentions were noble the execution on the ground was faulty. This has been India’s main problem. It just CAN NOT execute a well-conceived plan. Of course, the defence forces and the Space Research agencies are an exception to this as they brook no government interference. We also have the sterling example of the building of a Metro line in New Delhi where the CEO refused to entertain any interference from any quarter, particularly from the bureaucrats.

Now back to the demonetization scheme. By itself the objectives of the announcement were laudable. It was to eradicate the scourge of black money. To force a digital economy habit and digitise the rural hinterland of India. This was to have been flawlessly executed by the Reserve Bank of India through its vast network of banks. The ATMs were to be quickly configured to take the new currency. Banks were to ensure hassle-free withdrawal. What was the reality? The ATMs did not have enough cash. It took a long time to configure. People had to wait endlessly to withdraw their own money. The rules were changing virtually on a day-by-day basis. Corrupt bank officials were helping the rich to horde their ill-gotten wealth through dubious means. Several people died in the queue while waiting for their turn to draw cash. It was a comedy of errors of the same type that we saw and still see in the skills training business. In both these instances, the policies were good but it was the faulty implementation on the ground that spoiled the show. In India, this is the usual problem. Let me highlight this by citing a different example. In the year 1984 the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, while on her way to give an interview was shot at by her own bodyguards. Immediately she was to be taken to the hospital but the car driver was nowhere to be seen. So they had to put her in a different car and that resulted in some delay. Her son Late Rajiv Gandhi was in eastern India and he could not get any authentic information as there were no radio announcements on her condition. He had to switch on to BBC which by 2.30 in the afternoon announced that she was no more. All the foreign embassies had their flags put at half-mast by noon except the Indian offices. why- again no official announcement. It was only by evening that the Indian TV made the formal announcement but by then it was too late as riots had broken on the street. It was a classic case of how a major unfortunate tragedy was handled by the bureaucracy. Now contrast this with the assassination of John Kennedy in Dallas by Lee Oswald in 1963. This description is given by the late economist John Galbraith in his memoirs. John was having lunch with Kay Graham, then the directing head of the Washington Post when they were told that the President was shot in Dallas. The time was 12.30 noon. At 2.38 pm CST Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as the next President of the US aboard Air Force 1. In Washington, Bill Walton was preparing the place where Kennedy’s coffin was to be put while Sarge Shriver was preparing the list of dignitaries to be invited for the funeral. A major event of the President’s assassination and the government machinery was in full swing as if they expected such an unfortunate tragedy to happen any time, any day. This is what I call “execution preparedness’ which in India we do not comprehend. Instead after such mishaps we usually appoint a commission or an enquiry committee. This committee often spends years finalising its recommendations which, by the way, are again never implemented. Thus, we have a cycle of paradigm-changing announcements and then the post-mortem of why things did not go as planned. The President of India is worried that the so-called skilled youth may turn violent if no job opportunities come their way. The borrower will get frustrated if he cannot withdraw his own money on time, every time. Time for the next announcement!!!!!