GoM okays skill development authority, ministries in a huff

A toned-down version of a proposed national-level authority to boost the UPA government’s skill training programme across India with the help of private sector got the nod of a ministerial group last week, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Apr 15, 2013, 01:00:43 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A toned-down version of a proposed national-level authority to boost the UPA government’s skill training programme across India with the help of private sector got the nod of a ministerial group last week.

A group of ministers headed by finance minister P Chidambaram approved the setting up of a National Skill Development Authority (NSDA) as an attached office of the Planning Commission to implement skill development across the nation.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh referred the matter to a GoM when several central ministers opposed it saying it would create another “bureaucratic set-up” in the government.

Even the efforts of the National Skill Development Board headed by Montek Singh Ahluwalia to push for a uniform skill development policy across the board had failed as individual ministries were not willing to budge. Telecom minister Kapil Sibal, rural development minister Jairam Ramesh, HRD minister Pallam Raju, labour minister Mallikarjun Kharge and tribal affairs minister Kishore Chandra Deo had opposed the proposal moved by the Planning Commission.

A government official said the ministries feared losing their dominance in skill upgradation sector as the proposed authority would take up their functions. He added that the ministries were not open to reforms that would attract private players to get involved in skill development programmes.

The GoM decided in favour of the authority but slotted a bigger role for the ministries in the implementation of the skill development programme as envisaged in the original proposal. “The ministries will continue to run their sector specific skill development programmes and receive money for their schemes directly from the finance ministry,” the official said.

The new authority will also play a pivotal role in helping the private sector setting up skill training centres on their own or with government bodies. The authority would be mandated to provide skills for employment to 50 million youth by end of the 12th five year plan (2017).

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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