Education and skill development: impact on economic growth of India

India's population is huge at 1.21 billion. It is fast expanding at a rate of 17% and integrating rapidly into the global economy. India is among the ‘young’ countries in the world, with the proportion of the work force in the age group of 15–59 years, increasing steadily. However, presently only 2% of the total workforce in India have undergone skills training. India has a great opportunity to meet the future demands of the world, India can become the worldwide sourcing hub for skilled workforce. The challenges for India get magnified, as it needs to reach out to the million plus workforce ready population, while facing an ever increasing migration of labour from agriculture to manufacturing and services. With the government launching a number of schemes to empower the young workforce, the challenges magnify as there is a need for effective implementation of the schemes at the grass root level with equal participation from all the stakeholders concerned. The realization of this demographic dividend led to the formulation of the “National Skills Policy” in 2009 which set a target of imparting skills training to 500 million, by 2022. The Prime Minister's National Council on Skill Development is an apex institution for policy direction and review.

To make India internationally competitive and to boost its economic growth further, a skilled workforce is essential. As more and more India moves towards the Knowledge economy, it becomes increasingly important for it to focus on advancement of the skills and these skills have to be relevant to the emerging economic environment. For transforming its demographic dividend, an efficient skill development system is the need of the hour. Therefore to achieve its ambitious skilling target, it is imperative to have holistic solutions of the challenges instead of piecemeal interventions.