Skill India - Need of Scale & Process Orientation

India is expected to be home to a skilled workforce of 500 million by 2022. About 12 million persons are expected to join the workforce every year. The good news is that India has one of the youngest populations in the world, a trend that is expected to continue until 2040. This presents the country with a unique opportunity to complement what an ageing world needs the most and that is a large pool of productive workers.

The accelerated economic growth has increased the demand for skilled manpower, but that has also highlighted the shortage of skilled manpower in the country.India has the potential to become a powerhouse with the population set to rise to 1.3 billion by 2020, out of which 60% are in the working age of (15-59 years). Hence, it is all the more imperative to ‘skill India’.

The launch of the Skill India Mission, and the creation of the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship has created an ideal impact on youth however the mission has got failed to deliver on expectations . 

There are key lessons for effectively scaling up programmes :-

- Conducive Political Environment

- Strong Strategic Partnerships 

- Adopting a life cycle approach

- Systematic Monitoring 

- Gradual Processes 

Finally, it is important to remember that no one model can work everywhere – adapting programmes to diverse cultural regions or the specific requirements of trainees is par for the course. The process of scaling up is fairly fluid and subject to various changes.