Skill Development and Employment Generation in India

India has emerged as a strong economy over the years. However, it needs to capitalize on its resources such as demographic dividend which would act as a driver of growth. India is projected to be the World's most populous country by 2022, surpassing China and are expected to add close to 400million people between 2012 and 2017(U.N.) and are relatively young, with a median age of 27, while dependency ratio will decline by 2% in 2020, resulting in pulling the economy to a sustainable high growth phase. By looking at this demographic advantage of increasing the proportion of working age population account for 60.3% of the total population (Census2011), the Government of India has been giving special focus to skill development and employment generation as the core policy initiative during the past three years in order to reap the advantage of “Youth Demographics”. Various policy measures have been taken to speed up the skilled labour force like establishment of NSDM, Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana at National, State as well as regional level, skill development is yet to become aspirational among youth despite these efforts. The present paper tries to measure the present status of Skill Development and Employment Generation in India and also critically measure the challenges in skill development with a view to meet the skill and manpower requirement by 2022.