India will soon become world’s human resource capital, says Modi

If China is the world’s manufacturing capital, India will soon become the world’s human resource capital,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said while launching Skill India campaign here on Wednesday.

“It’s not that skill only brings money in your pocket, it instils you with a sense of confidence, brings a new strength in life,” said Modi, adding that the government wanted opportunities to increase, which is why, “we have not restricted ourselves to skills, we have focussed on entrepreneurship.”

The Prime Minister also formally launched the ‘National Skill Development Mission’, unveiled the new ‘National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship 2015’, which “supersedes the policy of 2009”, as also the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana and Skill Loan Scheme.

The policy’s target for training new entrants by 2022 is 40.2 crore with the primary objective of meeting the challenge of skilling at scale with “speed, standard and sustainability.”

Earlier, Skill Development Minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy said India had a formally skilled workforce of only 4.69 per cent, compared with 68 per cent in the UK, 75 per cent in Germany, 52 per cent in the US, 80 per cent in Japan and 96 per cent in South Korea.

The policy, which seeks to address human resource needs by aligning supply of skilled workers with industry requirements, sees private sector partnership as crucial for its success. It urged industry to earmark at least 2 per cent of its payroll bill (including for contract labour) for skill development initiatives.

Welcoming Skill India, Maruti Suzuki said in a statement: “We believe that the clearance for an institutional framework for the National Skills Mission, combined with the approval for the first integrated national policy for developing skills and promoting entrepreneurship is a step in the right direction by the Prime Minister.”

Congress leaders, meanwhile, took to Twitter, saying it was a ‘re-launch’, and another case of the Modi government ‘repackaging’ UPA schemes. Digvijaya Singh tweeted: “Skill India initiated by UPA Govt, now NDA & Modi claiming Credit! Grow Up!”