Bureaucracy sits on PM’s skill development initiatives

The bureaucracy is preventing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s skill development initiatives from reaching the people. Though PM Modi had laid the foundation stone for the first Indian Institute for Skills (IIS) in December last year, the curriculum for the institute is yet to be finalised by the Union Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE).

A source, who did not want to be named, but is close to the whole process of drafting the curriculum for IIS, said, “The last meeting, which the board of people responsible for drafting the curriculum had, was in January. Since then, there have not been any discussions on the way forward. Nobody, except the ‘baccalaureates’ in the ministry, knows the status of the curriculum.”

PM Modi had announced the setting up of six IIS’ last December in Kanpur during an event where a number of other skill development projects were announced. The IIS’ have been envisioned to be at par with the existing IITs (Indian Institute of Technology) in terms of facilities, curriculum and faculty.

The source said, “A skilled graduate of IIS is supposed to be as good as an IITian—that is the line of vision for the IIS project. If there are such highly skilled people, who can stop our industries from flourishing? But for that to happen, we first need a curriculum to make an IIS student at par with an IITian.”

IIS was conceptualised by PM Modi during his visit to Singapore’s Institute of Technical Education (ITE). The six IIS’ are to be established with collaboration between the MSDE and the ITE, Singapore. MSDE is required to finalise the IIS’ curriculum, taking inspiration from the Singapore model of training and adopt various best practices from the country. However, since January, the work has been down in the dumps.

Singapore’s ITE has received international recognition for its curriculum and rate of success. There are three ITEs in Singapore, with an enrolment rate of 25,000 students per year. The curriculum has received much acclaim because of its collaboration with Singapore’s industries and access for students to train on advanced machinery, which makes securing employment easier for them.

Explaining the need for skilled development schemes, Shruti Arora, president, Confederation of Education Excellence, said, “Turning our raw labour into skilled labour should be a priority of not only our government, but also our industries. We have been emphasising on this for a long time now to ensure participation of big manufacturing houses with skill development initiatives. Skilled labour has a huge potential to bring positive push to our economy, because then our skilled labour can also go overseas.”