Bridging the Skill Gap in India: Challenges and Solutions

The globalised world demands vocational skilled manpower to convert growth opportunities into jobs and stable incomes. With millions of new job-seekers entering the job market every year, vocational skill development has become one of India's urgent priorities. Skill development is one of the essential ingredients for India's future economic growth as the country transforms into a diversified and internationally-competitive economy. Skill development is going to be the defining element in India's growth story. The present paper attempts to study the present skill capacity, need of skill development in India, review the skill development policies, challenges for Skill development along with their solutions. The paper studied the relationship between education, employment and Skill development. The study also found that both the government and its partner agencies have undertaken various measures/initiatives for the effective implementation of the Skill development system in the country, but there are big challenges which need quick resolution. A survey (random survey) method was employed to elicit primary information from 100 students who took STAR training from different NSDC partners in Lucknow. The findings seek to answer some basic questions. Are the youths being really mobilized to be skilled outside the formal education system? Is the training delivery mechanism good enough to make the students employable? Would the industries be willing to cut down the minimum qualification criteria to promote skill development? A questionnaire based on random sampling, was employed for data collection. Data analysis was accomplished using simple weighted average and percentage method.