The journey of democracy and development in the post-independent Indian state under the Congress-led government had conceptualised poverty and unemployment as a phenomenon of unsatisfied individual needs that could only be met through external material support for the economic survival of the poorer masses. In this context, Shibsankar Jena argues that “Skill India” is a counter-discursive approach to the statistical understanding of poverty and transforms an individual’s abstract labour into concrete labour through developing his/her skills and capabilities to become a productive and innovative agent of the global economy.
