Skilled India for Independence India

Dr.K.K.Jhunjhunwala

The country is celebrating its 70th Independence Day under the able leadership of Shri Narendra Modi, The Honourable Prime Minister of India. He belongs to Bharatiya Janata Party and enjoys a complete majority in Lok Sabha. Prior to this, for major part of these 70 years, was ruled by the Indian National Congress.

It is natural that with change of leadership, there will be change in perception for developmental initiatives. Among other things – the idea of skill India is indeed an attractive one. We decided to dedicate our cover story this month on the theme skilled India for Independence India.

 Skill India is a campaign launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 15 July 2015 with an aim to train over 40 crore (400 million) people in India in different skills by 2022. It includes various initiatives of the government like “National Skill Development Mission”, “National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, 2015”, “Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY)” and the “Skill Loan scheme”.

In India – it is our habit that we do not do our things by ourselves. Whether a small electric connection at home or painting of walls or repair of geyser or a pipeline, anything, we need someone to help us with. This is because – we lack skills to do all these things. Similarly, whether it is in office or industry we need skilled people to do the job. Incidentally the culture that has been developed so far concentrates on formal education and we produce doctorates and post-graduates, who cannot, contribute, other than in their own discipline and remains unemployed.

The true freedom of the country lies in its skilling of the citizen and their capacity to contribute to the economy. It is in this perspective that skilling of the citizen is of paramount importance. If we take the example of the west, we find that skilling of its citizen’s starts right from school education. 

Our Cover Story this month is written by Dr. Rajmani Singh, professor from Manipur University who has given an indepth analysis on skilling India. Their are challenges and oppurtunities in skilling India. To add to this, we have another story from Tripura where our Media Executive Kuheli Saha examines how a speech impaired artisan from Tripura made all the differences and scripted a remarkable success story. 

Let this Independence began a new era of skill India Happy Independence Day