SKILL DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA: NEED, CHALLENGES AND WAYS FORWARD

Globalization, knowledge and competition have intensified the need for highly skilled workforce in both the developing and developed nations as it enables them to accelerate their growth rate towards higher trajectory. For India, skill development is critical from both socio-economic and demographic point of view. Therefore, the present paper attempts to study the present skill capacity, challenges in front of skill development initiatives in India along with their solutions. The skill capacity has been assessed in the form of general education and vocational training level of the Indian workforce in the age group of 15-59 and which was found to extremely low i.e. around 38 % of the workforce are not even literate, 25 % are having below primary or up-to primary level of education and remaining 36% has an education level of middle and higher level whereas only 10 % of the workforce is vocationally trained (with 2 % formal and 8 % informal training). The study also found that both the Government and its partner agencies have undertaken various measures/initiatives for the effective implementation of the skill development system in the economy, but still faces a number of unresolved issues/challenges that need immediate attention of the policy makers. Hence, skill development initiatives of the government should focus on these obstacles and develop the programs accordingly to resolve these hurdles for the complete success of the skill development initiatives