On the first ever world youth Skills day (July 15), the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government launched the Skill India initiative, the third such ambitious programme after Make in India and Digital India in recent months. A National Skill Development Mission and a new National Policy for Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (NPSDE) 2015 are highlights of what is essentially a revamped version of the National Skill Development (NSD) policy of the Congress-led UPA II government launched in 2009. The national mission is a booster to achieve NPSDE in mission (urgent) mode. Besides, revision of NSD 2009 was required because of an in-built five-year review clause in it, and the changing skill development landscape.
NPSDE 2015, launched by prime minister Narendra Modi together with the booster Skill India initiative, is a departure from the NSD 2009 in terms of focus. While the latter was primarily focused on setting skilling standards with involvement of the private sector, NPSDE 2015 has the virtue of introducing skilling into the education system — an overdue initiative. NSD 2009 served the useful purpose of establishing sector skill councils to prescribe syllabuses and curriculums of 37 trades and vocations besides establishing the National Skills Development Corporation, which funded private vocational education and training (VET) firms.
“The new policy contains a structural framework and mechanism for introducing VET into the education system,” says Navin Bhatia, managing director of the Delhi-based Navkar Centre for Skills which has established 34 VET centres countrywide. Starting with Kaushal Kendras (skill centres) at the village level, NPSDE 2015 envisages a multi-level skills education system with VET introduced into high school curriculums, Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) at block level, community colleges, polytechnics and private VET providers at districts level, and state government skills universities.
“The primary objective of this policy is to meet the challenge of skilling at scale with speed, standard (quality) and sustainability... the policy also identifies the overall institutional framework which will act as a vehicle to reach the expected outcomes,” says the policy document. Among the ambitious targets of NPSDE 2015 are introduction of VET in 25 percent of the country’s secondary schools from class IX onwards over the next five years, and integration of skills acquisition and training into higher education with polytechnics offering National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF, designed by sector skills council under NSD 2009) vocational courses and bachelor of VET degrees.
Quite clearly, the new NPSDE 2015 is comprehensive, ambitious and overdue but the moot point is whether the under-developed Indian economy has the capacity and resources to implement it. In February when presenting the Union Budget 2015-16, for the first time ever, finance minister Arun Jaitley reduced the Centre’s education outlay, expressing the hope that state governments awarded a larger share of Central government tax revenue by the 14th Finance Commission, will take up the slack. Most economists rule out any such possibility.
“To skill 400 million citizens requires massive investment in human capital development. There’s a huge shortage of workshops, laboratories, content, teachers, and assessors. We need a clear roadmap on how to meet the skilling challenge pragmatically,” says Bhatia
Nevertheless India Inc leaders are cautiously optimistic about NPSDE 2015. “Prime minister Modi has placed the NSD initiative of the UPA-II government on a higher pedestal. Integration of VET into the school and higher education systems will change India’s overdue skills development narrative dramatically,” says Vijay K. Thadani, co-founder and chief executive of NIIT Ltd (estb. 1981), India’s premier ICT training company which changed India’s ICT development story.
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
Slow dissolution
It’s not only the 13 indian institutes of Management (IIMs) which are under siege (see cover story). Even the globally ranked Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are under fire from cadres of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Hindu majoritarian cultural organisation and ideological parent of the BJP which heads the BJP/NDA government voted to power in New Delhi last summer (2014), and of several affiliate organisations known as the sangh parivar (‘RSS family’).
“These government institutes funded from tax payers’ money are becoming a ground for anti-India and anti-Hindu activities.
Faculties with low morals are misguiding students,” says an essay in the The Organiser (July 19), a weekly published by the RSS since 1947. According to the essay written by Sandeep Singh, promoter of the Swadeshi School for Training in Indian Knowledge and a regular contributor to the The Organiser, “Anti-India/anti-Hindu activities are being carried out in these institutes”. Striking out beyond the IITs, Singh also questions the appointment of A.M. Naik as chairman of the Board of Governors of IIM-Ahmedabad for a second term, and discontinuance of the traditional annual Saraswati pooja at NIT, Rourkela.
The promulgation of the IIM Bill 2015, sniping at IITs and appointment of RSS sympathisers as heads of the Indian Council of Historical Research, Film & Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, and the National Book Trust, have alarmed academics in Delhi. “Clearly, these comments obviously approved by the editors of The Organiser are frightening. It seems as if RSS is running Indian education,” says Prof. Manindra Nath Thakur, lecturer in the department of political science at Delhi’s top-ranked Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Indeed the brazenness with which the BJP government is appointing individuals with open RSS sympathies to important education and cultural institutions is generating panic in the academy dominated for decades by left-liberal academics. Baldeo Bhai Sharma (former editor of Panchajanya, a Hindi weekly published by RSS since 1948) was appointed chairman of the National Book Trust in March after the term of eminent Malayalam writer Sethumadhavan was cut short. Yellapragada Sudershan Rao of the Bharatiya Itihaasa Sankalana Samithi — an RSS-affiliated organisation committed to writing history from a Hindu nationalist perspective — was appointed director of the Indian Council of Historical Research last July, and Gajendra Singh Chauhan, a lightweight television actor best known for his portrayal of Yudhisthira in the mythological television series Mahabharat, was appointed chairman of FTII in June.
According to left-liberal academics in the national capital, these institutional appointments are a sign of things to come. Within the next few months vacancies will arise in the offices of vice chancellor of 14 Central universities, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), Films Development Corporation and the Lalit Kala Akademi. “The profile of Indian higher education could change dramatically within the next one year,” says the principal of a top-ranked college affiliated with Delhi University who requested anonymity.
Meanwhile to formulate the New Education Policy 2015 with public participation (see Special Report p. 80), Union HRD minister Smriti Irani has been “regularly conferring” with leaders of RSS-affiliated organisations.
But in the new era of mortgages, EMIs and credit cards, the natural inclination of academics to stand up and speak up is gradually but perceptibly dissolving.
Swati Roy (Delhi)