Hand with marker writing, Skill concept. White background.
Over 180 million or 69 per cent of the country’s youth population between the age of 18 and 34 years live in its rural areas. Of these, the bottom of the pyramid youth from poor families with no or marginal employment number about 55 million.
The Centre’s ambitious Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen KaushalyaYojana (DDU-GKY), a placement-linked skill development programme for rural poor youth under National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM), was launched in September 2014.
Out of 10.78 lakh, rural youths trained under DDU-GKY over 6.27 lakh (58 per cent) have got placement till date. Over 4.50 lakh trained youth are still to get a job in the market under this scheme run by the Ministry of Rural Development.
The overall target of the scheme is to train and get placement for 28,82,677 rural youth by March 2022. As per the data available on DDU-GKY website, Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Telangana, Odisha and Jammu and Kashmir have reported placement of more than 70 per cent trained youth. Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Sikkim are the States where less than 30 per cent of trained youth have got placements.
Kerala, Maharashtra, Haryana and Karnataka are among the States where more than 50 per cent of the trained youth have got placement.
Against the total target to train youth, Odisha has commenced training of 70 per cent, while Arunachal Pradesh has started only two per cent programmes.
Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Kerala, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Assam are the States which have started training more than 50 per cent of the given target.
Dual objectives
According to the DDU-GKY website, the scheme is tasked with the dual objectives of adding diversity to the incomes of rural poor families and cater to the career aspirations of rural youth. DDU-GKY is uniquely focussed on rural youth between the ages of 15 and 35 years from poor families. As a part of the Skill India campaign, it plays an instrumental role in supporting the social and economic programmes such as Make in India, Digital India, Smart Cities and Start-Up India, Stand-Up India campaigns.
There is a mandatory coverage of socially disadvantaged groups, i.e for SC/ST-50 per cent, minorities- 15 per cent, and women 33 per cent under DDU-GKY. DDU-GKY follows a funding pattern of 60:40 between Centre and State generally. DDU-GKY is working with 736 Project Implementing Agencies having 1,602 projects with 1,738 training centre across the country.
Published on December 2, 2020
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