Population Dividend or Population Disaster

The Government of India has in the last 5 years focused attention on the problems of unskilled youth who do not complete school (80% of all youth) and a consequent mismatch between demand for skilled jobs emanating from economic growth, and the supply of skilled manpower. The 11^th Plan mentions that if the 500 million youth who reach employable age are unskilled, hence unable to participate in the benefits of the economic growth, the Population Dividend which follows from the young manpower contributing to the economy as taxes and value added products as against old manpower which takes away resources, as pension, healthcare, will not follow and a large unskilled young population without jobs will lead to social unrest causing a Population Disaster.    We seem to be headed in the direction of a disaster since implementation of the Skills Training Schemes of the 17 Ministries of Government of India  have not taken off the ground.  In fact, there is an Inter-Ministerial Board to coordinate efforts of the 17 Ministries engaged in skilling youth, but the Board never meets and different Ministries go their own way and make impractical Rules & Regulations and impose conditions, which no honest Vocational Training Provider (VTP) can follow. 

 

The PMO had recently announced a target of training 550 million youth by 2022 of which 150 million were to be trained by NSDC and 350 million by the 17 Ministries of Government of India referred to earlier.  In the last 5 years, less than 20% of the Annual Target for skill training has been achieved, and, unless impediments in implementation are removed, we will achieve less than a third of the target leading to unemployment, social unrest and Law & Order problems.  

 

It is not too late to understand the impediments in the path of VTPs, adopt pragmatic policies for target achievement   and make it conducive for organisations with proven liability & credibility to scale up significantly by removing the risk of scaling up, mainly; bureaucratic approvals and cash flow problems due to delayed payments.