A Study of Skill Development Program in India with Special Reference to Rural India

With a population size of over 1.2 billion, India is considered one of the fastest-growing countries in the world. Its working-age population is expected to grow significantly by 2030. This demographic dividend could provide India with an advantage over affluent countries in the future, but "this should not be taken for granted because" the majority of the working populations are still unemployed. If the majority of the working-age population continues to be unemployed due to a lack of skills, the demographic dividend may quickly turn into a disaster. Therefore, considering the unemployment scenario in the country and the need for a skilled workforce as required by the different industries, it is imperative to work to create a method to produce a skilled workforce so that it can be absorbed by the industry. This method to produce a skilled workforce is termed a skill development program launched through National Skill Development Policy in 2009. In this study we have investigated the implementation of skill development program in the Indian with special reference to rural India by analyzing secondary data, which has been collected from the different government reports and literature review. Saran district of Bihar is taken as a case study which acts as a proxy for the rural India. The study revealed that Skill development training center in rural India are skewed towards a particular industry. The majority of the Skill development training centers in the district are oriented to IT education. There is a mismatch between the industrial requirement and the outcome of the training center in the country. In order to meet the industrial need for trained labor, district needs to expand its training infrastructure as per their actual requirement. Keywords: Skill Development, Rural India, Domain Skill