Indian government launched several initiatives supporting new government policy under "Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikaas" slogan that aims at shaping and developing India’s human resources and helping our country to take advantage of demographic profile.

National Policy on Skill Development and Entrepreneurship 2015 drafted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi led government replaced 2009 policy formulated by the Ministry of Labour and Employment during UPA II government. A set of initiative, including National Skill Development Mission, Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana scheme (PMKVY) and the Skill Loan scheme were launched by the government in support of the Policy which aims at skilling more than 40 crore people by 2022. Interestingly, the 2009 version targeted 50 crore people.

If go by the policy document, the task of massive skilling of Indian workforce by providing training and certification is divided between twenty various ministries and departments and external agencies.The policy emphasizes the need of public-private partnerships in order to achieve the ambitious goal. However, the skilling project ended up in mushrooming training schemes that are not coordinated and do not often have any connection with each other or with the center.

What is important here is that the businesses that are generally more flexible and aspiring than the government instead of jumping on the governments’ skilling bandwagon started their own training programs to create workforce skilled for their specific needs. This created certain disproportions in skill generation: while certain industries are growing and thus require more of skilled people, other industries are lagging behind or going through a crisis for various macroeconomic reasons.

The government stand on skill development articulated in The National Policy on Skill Development, whether old or new, declares skill development a top priority and needs to be synchronized with ambitious “Make in India” program. There is no doubt education (at first place!) and skilling is important for the people to benefits from country’s economic growth.