The Jammu and Kashmir Skill Development Mission and its affiliated training providers Monday organized various awareness programmes to observe World Youth Skills Day to raise awareness about the importance of youth skills development.
Mission Director JKSDM participated in one such programme at Pulwama which was attended by Mission staff and other concerned.
“The programme highlighted the importance of skill development in providing youth opportunities to develop their competencies and accelerate their transition to work,” a statement of JKSDM said.
It also said that apart from creating awareness on skill development, youth were encouraged to participate in the process of development and avail the different training opportunities.
Currently, more than 50 training providers affiliated with J&K Skill Development Mission are providing quality skill training to the youth of the State.
Recent years have seen significant shifts in the world of work, with the focus moving away from industry, towards innovation and the ‘knowledge economy’. At the same time, the global economic slowdown has meant fewer labour market opportunities, particularly for young people. Consequently, young people today enter a world of unparalleled uncertainty and risk, with the most marginalised and vulnerable facing the greatest threat.
The majority of young people across the world continue to thrive, with lower than average youth unemployment, and a well-performing school system. But for a significant proportion of young people, the transition from school to further education and especially to the workplace, remains challenging. Efforts to improve formal qualifications and work-based training have been redoubled in response, but there is also a growing consensus that more must be done to build the ‘softer’ skills which employers say are increasingly important in getting on at work
The rising graph of local Valley youth, taking up arms in the J&K, has again brought back the focus on the efficacy of the central government-funded schemes like Himayat, Udaan, and Special Scholarship.
These schemes were initiated during the UPA – II tenure in February 2011 as an outcome of the recommendations of Dr C Rangarajan Committee report. The idea behind these schemes was to engage J&K youth, especially Valley youth gainfully and help the assimilate with mainstream India by excelling in education, skill development and take up jobs or start their own entrepreneurial initiatives.
However, 7 to 8 years down the line, the schemes have not been able to make much difference on the ground for which they had aimed at.
Though there is no official word yet, sources in the government said that Udaan scheme, a Special Industry Initiative (SII) to enhance skill and employability of graduates and three-year engineering diploma holders and offer of jobs in the private sector, has been discontinued because of lack of enthusiasm shown by the youth.
As per the last figures, though under Udaan, over 32,000 candidates had joined training against the target of 57,000 jobs, only about 15,000 were offered jobs in domestic and multinational companies. But the number of those who joined and did not drop out is not known as the Ministry of Home Affairs has so far not come up with the figures, giving an impression that the actual number of people joining the corporate world is too small from the Valley.
Officials, dealing with the scheme, concede tacitly that despite Kashmir having a wonderful talent pool, youth are not ready to take up employment outside because of safety and security and think that the best bet for them is to either have a job or a business in secure environments of the Valley.
The situation is no different in case of Himayat scheme, a skill development programme for the youth under implementation since 2011. It envisages training and equipping with skills that are great in demand to 1,24,180 youth with placement assurance of at least 70 per cent.
As per the latest data available, of the 32 projects sanctioned and target allotted to train 53,547 candidates, only 6,977 candidates are under training and 3,118 have been trained.
The most successful of the schemes, special scholarship has also come under a cloud after the recent Pulwama strike, leading to mass exodus of Kashmiri students leaving their respective colleges and heading home.
Officials agree that the only way to succeed and make these scheme work is building trust among youth through political approach for which even the larger society will have to contribute.
The youth should be introduced to outside of the formal education system which is a well-established vocational training system such as the Craftsman Training Scheme (CTS), the public Industrial Training Institutes (ITI) and private Industrial Training Centres (ITCs), under the Directorate General of Employment and Training (DGE&T). We can ask some private leading firms, such as Tata Motors and Bosch, which have their own training institutes, with state-of-the-art training facilities and excellent training programs for their employees, to support the government. Some multinational firms that have entered India more recently, such as Toyota, also set up their own training institutes, which offer excellent training, mainly for those who work for the firm. The various sectors of skill training in JK State should include tourism, agriculture, hydro- electric projects, horticulture, software, telecom etc. New ventures and opportunities would create interest and ingenuity amongst the youth. This would help the state to solve the unemployment problem & make youth employable. The Skilled youth can act as one of the vital factors to transform the State and also be of great help in developing the Smart Cities.
