A few years back the government of India made the ambitious declaration that by 2022 India will need a skilled workforce of 500 million youth. Of course true to form no one questioned the logic of arriving at this number. Then it turned out that two dozen central government ministries were involved in churning out the numbers. Each ministry had its own set of rules of the game. It was like a game of cricket managed by 20 umpires! No wonder it resulted in massive confusion about the quality and output. Then came the new government which scaled down the number to 109 million. Given the fact that presently the country has the capacity to churn out only 7 million youth per annum, it is anybody's guess how big is going to be the shortfall. The skilling has to happen through National Skill Development Corporation which has morphed into a soft loan agency. It also has dutifully morphed into a typical government agency and the usual time taken to clear a proposal is anywhere between 6 months to a year. The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship has decided to involve the members of parliaments to monitor the skills training in 543 constituencies. This is a sure recipe for disaster. The Association for democratic reforms - a distinguished body of former professors from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad points out that(http://adrindia.org/research-and-report/election-watch/lok-sabha/2014/lok-sabha-2014-winners-analysis-criminal-and-finan) around 34 % of the elected representatives have criminal records. If these worthy representatives are given the task of monitoring the skills programme in their constituencies then it is not very difficult to imagine the scenario. They will start interfering by nominating their candidates to be appointed as trainers. The building in which the training has to happen will have inflated rentals... The list can go on and on..... I have the personal experience of a state in which a central minister, a couple of years back, forced us to open a training centre and then he started telling all the youth that once the training is given they all will be given jobs in public sector undertaking. The next day in front of the centre there was a riot-like situation with each youth quoting the minister wanted to get admitted. It is my firm belief that for serious skills to happen the government must get out of "managing" it. It must provide policy direction and rope in serious industry players and ask them to manage it. Otherwise, by 2022 we will again be debating why we could not achieve the numbers we set out to achieve and the usual blame game will begin afresh.