Government of India to conduct First ‘Skills Stock Survey’ to ascertain how skilled Indians are

New Delhi : How do Indians skill themselves? How much do they spend on acquiring skills for a job? Do they think better skills get them better jobs? To answer questions such as these, the Centre, for the first time, will conduct a survey to ascertain how skilled Indians are.

The four-month-long ‘Skills Stock Survey’, which is set to begin this month, will take stock of how skilled Indians are, the modes of training that people adopt, the level of awareness about skill development programmes, how accessible long- and short-term trainings are, the sectors in which youth take skilling programmes, the impact these programmes make for candidates and the willingness of our youth to take skill development courses.

The survey, to be carried out by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) and the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), will cover over 160,000 households and will look at collecting details at the district level in urban and rural areas which will help the Centre formulate better action plans to take the government’s ‘Skill India’ programme forward, said NSDC MD Manish Kumar. “CMIE conducts an all-India household survey— Consumer Pyramids Household Survey — which captures consumer sentiments on economy and unemployment rate, every quarter.

This robust survey will be done using the University of Michigan methodology, which even the US government uses to assess penetration of skilling, and will be submitted to the Centre in May 2018,” said Kumar, who is also NSDC’s CEO.

“The country’s top economists and statisticians were consulted for adopting the CMIE methodology to conduct skill stock survey.” According to the National Sample Survey Office survey of 2015, only 2.2% of those in the 15-59 age group had access to formal training. India, however, has a culture of training and skilling through informal methods and on the job training. Besides, the Centre is also studying industry’s demands by mapping economic clusters at the district level through district action plans, starting with the state of Uttarakhand.

“By the middle of this year, we will have at least an exploratory, big picture of how the industry looks and what skills are in demand. The government of India has a definition of skills, but the way surveys have been done in the past has only given a picture of skill requirements in the manufacturing sector, which is not enough. Today’s skills are about the service sector,” Kumar said. “Also since, it is about understanding the skill requirements of the whole country, both white and blue collar workers have to be interviewed.”

After taking over in September as minister of skill development and entrepreneurship, Dharmendra Pradhan had said that since there is no proper accounting or mapping of skilled workforce in our country, the focus of his ministry, apart from creating momentum for Skill India, will also be to create a mechanism to know how many people are actually skilled in the country.

On the issue of poor placements and loss of jobs, Kumar said though the ‘Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana’, which is the flagship scheme for skill training and jobs for rural youth, had been witnessing below-target placement levels for the last five years, of late the numbers have improved, with at least 40% of people skilled under the scheme getting placed.

Targeting Over 160,000 Households

– Survey will be carried out by Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy and National Skill Development Corporation
– Survey will cover over 160,000 households households and will look at collecting details at the district level in urban and rural areas
– According to the National Sample Survey Office survey of 2015, only 2.2% of those in the 15-59 age group had access to formal training
– Centre studying industry demands by mapping economic clusters at district level through district action plans, starting with Uttarakhand

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