By 2022 India will skill 500 million youth. By 2019 India will provide electricity in every home. By 2019 all corruption will be eradicated. India will be poverty free by 2020. India will overtake China by 2025. No farmer will die due to lack of irrigation by 2020. Ganga will be cleaned by 2020. No malnutritional death will happen within the next 5 years. No pending cases in court by….

We Indians suffer from an incurable malady that I call the ‘catching up’ syndrome. This malady gets compounded by another assumption that the future can become bright and rosy without putting in commensurate efforts today. It looks like the country is fed, day in and day out, with promises about what will happen in the future. But what is the reality? Let me take just one example, to highlight the central theme of this note. The goal of skilling and training 500 million by 2022 is now officially abandoned by the government.( http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/govt-abandons-goal-of-training-500-million-people-in-new-skills-by-2022/story-XLtoXAEyrQjU4EMd8ZjMPM.html)

The nodal minister for managing the task of skill development and promoting entrepreneurship has been sacked. (http://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/why-rajiv-pratap-rudy-lost-his-job-in-narendra-modi-cabinet/840131/)

A report on the working of the National Skill Development Corporation has severely indicted the agency as not being competent for the task. (http://www.livemint.com/Politics/BDOMzwlJHO4gIDBCD2mXNN/Serious-conflict-of-interest-in-NSDCs-functioning-says-gov.html)

While the reality stares in our faces about lopsided objectives, conflicting interests, overlapping bodies, and leakage of funds, the government, looks like, managing only the headlines. We also get lulled in the cosy belief that all is well till the crisis becomes unmanageable. A country of 1.3 billion can only find 28 skilled artisans to represent us in the World skills competition in Abu Dhabi in October 2017. Take a look at China which has sent 52 participants. Japan has sent 40. A tiny country like Thailand has sent 24. But make no mistake. Soon there will be an announcement that by 2020 we will sweep all the medals at the championship.

What is the root cause(s) of this perpetual daydreaming? In my view, the following are the main reasons.

  • Wrong selection of so-called experts to manage the skill mission.
  • The continuous interference of political masters and the bureaucracy who have absolutely no clue about the subject.
  • The non-participation of the industry in the process of skill development.
  • The great Indian Input-Output confusion. (The confusion gets perpetuated by the demand-supply mismatch)

The assumption that big players in the skills training are good while small players are thieves and are there to rob government funds.

Now, the government has decided to train 100,000 youth by sending them to Japan for 3-5 years under a bilateral arrangement. So, the problem gets postponed by another 3-5 years. By which time the elections are over and we are free to listen to another headline! And surprisingly the government has also decided to seek expertise from Belarus to train our youth in Vocational education. One has never heard of Belarus as having any expertise in this area. But let me remind you this is again one of the headlines that you must forget till the other one comes.