First Meeting of National Skill Development Mission

The first meeting of the Governing Council of the National Skill Development Mission (NSDM) was held under the Chairmanship of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The meeting was attended by Chief Ministers of Maharashtra, Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir; Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Smriti Zubin Irani, Kalraj Mishra, and Ravi Shankar Prasad.

Senior bureaucrats, and corporate leaders, including, Cyrus P. Mistry, Chairman, Tata Group; Sachin Bansal, Founder and CEO Flipkart’ and Manish Sabharwal, Chairman and Founder, Team Lease Services also participated in the Governing Council meeting.

Some of the major decisions taken at the meeting included the following:

Skill training to be scaled up to cover at least 5 crore people during 2016-2017.

The Central Board for Skills Certification to be set up by September 2016 to infuse quality into India’s skill development ecosystem.

Unutilized infrastructure in existing engineering colleges to be leveraged for skill training courses.

Profit making Public Sector Units (PSUs) will be mandated to scale up apprenticeships, upto 10% of total manpower, over the course of this year. Private corporations are also expected to follow suit.

500 Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Kendras, which will provide skill training free of cost to be opened this year, to impart training to India’s aspiring youth.

50 Overseas Employment Skill Training Centres to be opened this year, in migratory pockets of the country.

500 Rozgar Utsavs will be held across Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs), Central Training Institutes, PMKVY training centres, toolrooms etc., to make skill training aspirational amongst youth.

A national skills competition, known as ‘India Skills’ will be launched during 2016-2017, to recognize the skills of India’s youth. This will be an annual event.

This year, a national level Convocation will be held for candidates who successfully complete ITI courses, to recognize their success.

Over the next one year, the capacity of ITIs to be further enhanced from 18.5 lakhs to 25 lakhs and over 5000 new ITIs will be created.

Traditional skills will be recognized, nurtured and promoted through informal apprenticeships, under various programmes.