India to provide skill training to new entrants

India today is the youngest country because 65 per cent of the population is below the age of 35. With an aim to strengthen the livelihoods of the economically weaker sections and to provide the country’s youth with employment opportunities, it’s been suggested in the NITI Aayog meeting that skill development training be imparted to 109 million new entrants into the job markets.

Chairing a meeting of NITI Aayog on skill development, Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal said, "The country needs to provide skill training to 109 million new entrants in to the job markets and around 460 million people to be re-skilled and up-skilled by 2020. Now the time has come that right to skill be legalised since we have already empowered our citizens with the right to information (RTI), right to food and right to education.”

“Every youth must be skilled to enable them to compete in a global village,” he added. A NITI Aayog official admitted that our country faces a serious problem of unemployment especially amongst the youths, ladies and low strata of the society. Badal underscored that India’s skilled population is only about 12 per cent. "I think the per capita income of our country is low because our nation is an unskilled nation, our country is far behind other countries in skill development," he said.

He also highlighted the need to mobilise targeted population particularly the youth in the rural areas, the weaker section and women to make them aware of skill training and motivate them to take advantage to take skill training programme. "We have to do lots of home work to convince them that skill is more important than even service in government jobs,” he said.