When a toddler starts observing adults around him, he tries to do them on his own by trying many times by himself. This art of observation leads the child to attempt to start walking, talking, eating etc. This is how a child picks up skills from his surroundings. Similarly, adults also have a bunch of knowledge embedded in their brains.
It’s only with proper training that these could become skills that may be used in employment, growth, jobs etc. The requirement of the day is to properly guide the youth towards skill building so that they become assets for the country’s future.
The importance of skill building in youth
In the present scenario, we can find many women wanting to leave behind their jobs to look after their families and children. In a nuclear set up, this is a common situation forcing women to quit their jobs. Many women possess knowledge about a wide range of activities that help them keep themselves occupied at home.
If these areas of their interest receive relevant formal training, they could be turned as income generators for the family. Similarly, the youth of this country possess good ideas, if when implemented could turn our nation into a superpower someday. But to provide them a platform and direction where their skills could be moulded, trained and applied, they require help and assistance.
Education, skills and employment
Our education system has for long encouraged the rote system of learning where everything is learnt conceptually and the application of the same concept in practical terms takes a backseat. For instance, let’s assume a girl who wants to learn to cook for the first time. If her mother told her the recipe of a dish verbally and expected the girl to cook in an excellent way, she may not be able to do it up to the mark.
On the other hand, if the mother practically demonstrated the preparation of the dish along with giving the recipe, the girl would pick it up even faster. The scenario in the second case helps build the girl’s skills in cooking because she gets a chance to observe, learn and apply things practically.
Similarly, our education system is definitely helping the youth of this country to become literates, but is not building their skills to make them employment ready. Our education system provides a platform of knowledge where students have to take that extra effort to turn the acquired knowledge into applicable ideas.
The youth of the country, once they complete their education, go out in search of jobs. Once they acquire a good job, they apply their learnt knowledge practically. Here, they are assisted by their company to acquire relevant job skills through training that could be both generic as well as customized for their own company.
So, knowledge plus training to apply the knowledge becomes a set of skills acquired by the person. These skills are further polished as the person gathers more experience at his job area. So mastering one’s acquired skills makes a person an expert in his chosen field.
But this kind of skill acquisition and skill building is more reachable to the cream of the population. It is not reachable to the masses and this is the ugly truth of our nation. People in the urban areas mostly get absorbed into companies of their choice based on the knowledge and skills they have acquired together with relevant experience, thus helping them build a good career of their own.
But the people in the rural areas may not necessarily have access to these super facilities and may thus lack in skills required to make them employable. India is the largest democracy in the world and villages are where the bigger chunk of the population lies. So, when development focuses only on cities and leaves out the rural areas, it is actually missing out on a valuable treasure of skills that could be brought to the surface to shape the future of India.
Every person is gifted with his own skill set, which when recognized, trained and applied becomes an asset to the country. Our government has taken many initiatives to cater to a wide class of people in helping them build their skills and upgrade their knowledge, to take our country to greater heights of development.
Schemes by the government
- Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PKVY)
The government has taken up many initiatives and development activities to improve skills of the members of the lower strata of society. Daily wage workers, laborers and the unorganized working class, etc can reap benefits from such schemes.
The main intention of this scheme it to help the enrolled people build such skills that directly helps them in their employment area. Skills are standardized and are imparted to these people to help them master their areas efficiently.
- Skill India
July 15th, 2015 was a wonderful day in history when Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi launched a massive campaign to recognize important skills that need to be imparted to the people in order to help them in their employment areas or rather to make them employable by uplifting their skills in relevant areas. Our prime Minister has set a goal of reaching out this campaign to almost 40 crore deserving people by the year 2022.
- Standup India
In the immediate year following 2015, i.e. in April 2016, our prime minister launched another massive campaign to take skill development to another level. This time he targeted women and also people belonging to the scheduled caste and tribes.
This scheme was a massive launch, since it brought the message of women entrepreneurship to the fore and encouraged women to become entrepreneurs from their comfort zones. To encourage their participation, their relevant skill building responsibilities were taken up by the Stand up India campaign.
Skill building
The youth of today are encouraged to think above their school and college curriculum and acquire the market-relevant skills which make them job-ready and provides wide choices in employment. Our country is also encouraging public-private partnerships in preparing the curriculum for training packages, both at the college level and at job areas to achieve world class expertise in skill development.
These days we have heard of boot camps where specific skills are targeted to a larger audience to help them achieve expertise in their chosen fields. Skill loans are also being funded and thought of as a prospective scheme by the government to achieve upgradation of learnt skills at the higher level to promote interest in research and development.
In keeping with these views and developments, the areas of education, employment and skill building have become prominent features of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funding platforms.
A national Policy on skill development has been undertaken by the government to look into individual growth and employ-ability index and to see an upsurge in making the youth of this country job-ready and to help them keep pace with the changing face of science and technology.
Conclusion
The development of a country is reflected in its GDP and this rise can be positively affected only when the country achieves overall development in every phase of growth. Our country has a youth population in majority that helps in promoting the welfare of the nation.
To help the youth contribute to the country’s growth and development, we have to upgrade their skills through necessary schemes and partnerships and provide them platforms to showcase their talent on a global level.
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