Modi government enlists global leaders to skill Indian youth

Modi government's Skill India programme
The Modi government has enlisted the support of global leaders such as TCS, BetterU, IBM, SAS, BSE, Wadhwani Foundation and English Edge to offer high-quality courses.

The ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship has signed an agreement with State Bank of India for engaging 5,000 apprentices as front office executive and tele-callers in the current financial year, a ministry release said on Wednesday. The ministry that coordinates all skill development efforts in the country is looking to sign several such deals to promote apprenticeship in the financial sector.

The Modi government has identified the importance of e-learning in a technology driven environment. The National Skill Development Corporation has created e-Skill India, a multilingual learning platform towards this purpose. eSkill India extends skilling opportunities from global leaders in e-learning. It has enlisted the support of global leaders such as TCS, BetterU, IBM, SAS, BSE, Apollo Medvarsity, Wadhwani Foundation and English Edge to offer high-quality courses in different sectors.

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It will also issue skill vouchers to micro, small and medium enterprises to allow learners and entrepreneurs to undergo training in their chosen programmes, the release said. The ministry is responsible for training skilled manpower and skill up-gradation of workers. The ministry imparted skill training to more than one crore youngsters under its various programmes since it was formed in 2014.

The ministry took several steps to expand and modernise the training eco-system in the country. The network of industrial training centres grew from 11,964 in 2014 to 14,939 in 2018-19. The enrolment in these institutes rose 37% to 23.08 lakh during the period. Under the first phase of the STRIVE scheme, 314 ITIs have been selected and 198 performance-based grant agreements have been signed. The scheme looks to increase the capacity of state governments to support ITIs and apprenticeship training. In all, 31 states have singed performance-based funding agreement.

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The Pradhan Mantri Yuva Udyamita Vikas Abhiyan is implementing a pilot project in 300 institutes including 200 industrial training institutes and 50 Polytechnics across Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Telangana, Kerala, West Bengal, Bihar, Assam, Meghalaya, Uttarakhand and Maharashtra.
The minister of skill development and entrepreneurship has met his counterparts across countries such as Japan, Canada, Singapore, UAE and Australia to enhance India’s capacity to produce a skilled workforce.