Govt many allow green field projects in vocational education

India Inc may soon get an opportunity to equip country’s skilled manpower as per the industry own standards, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Apr 4, 2007, 23:22:51 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India Inc may soon get an opportunity to equip country’s skilled manpower as per the industry own standards.

The Task Force on Vocational Education is expected to suggest green field projects in the area of vocational education to provide skilled manpower to meet the industry demands in wake of India’s booming economy. The report is likely to be submitted to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh by end of this month.

The Task Force is understood to have suggested a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model for the Greenfield projects to be set up in main industrial towns of the country. As per the model, the state governments would provide land to the interested corporate sector for setting up the green field projects whereas the Centre would provide a loan to them for establishing the centres. In return, the private player will admit a certain number of students sponsored by the government at subsidised fees.

Government officials say the corporate setting up the vocational education school will be free to decide on the courses to be run, the curriculum and the fee structure for students except those sponsored by the government. A particular green field project can be given permission for a specific industry, an official said.

The task force is also expected to recommend a similar approach for upgrading 1,396 government-run ITIs in the country. In the area of fast changing technology, an official said, most ITIs have outdated equipment and run old courses that are of no use to the industry, a fact brought out before the government by the industry in various submissions. “This needs to change and the government will help in bringing this change,” the official commented.

The PPP model will transfer the functional control of these ITIs to private sector whereas the government will continue to regulate fees and admissions. “The new management will get total financial and academic autonomy,” an official said.

Finance minister P Chidambaram, in his budget speech, has announced an interest free loan of Rs 2.5 crore to the private management of each ITI for upgradation and revision of courses. Under the new PPP mode, 300 ITIs would be upgraded every year.

Once the task force submits its report, the Ministry of Labour is likely to approach the Cabinet for the change in policy and allowing skill green field projects with private sector. The Ministry of Labour is working on a Cabinet note for new policy direction, an official confirmed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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