Fearing fund cut, ministries oppose skill dept

In a first sign of inter-ministerial squabble, Modi’s plan to carve out a department for skill development is facing resistance from ministries who will see a major chunk of their funds disappear if the plan is approved.

Updated on: Jun 24, 2014, 17:02:11 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

In a first sign of inter-ministerial squabble, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plan to carve out a separate department for skill development and entrepreneurship is facing stiff resistance from ministries who will see a major chunk of their funds disappear if the plan is approved.

Skill development is a massive government programme with annual allocation of about Rs 5,000 crore. The funds and the work are spread over 11 ministries including HRD, labour and rural development that often end up working at cross purposes.

The Modi government wants to put all skill development schemes under a new wing of the youth and sports affairs ministry. “No communication from the Cabinet secretariat has come in this regard,” a senior government official told HT. The secretariat decides on allocation of work to ministries on directions of the PMO.

The common refrain of the ministries is that taking away skill development from them would not work unless the state governments also implemented a similar single window mechanism. The states, like the Centre, also implement skill development programmes through different departments.

A labour ministry said that taking away labour training would result in the ministry losing its “core function”.

“We have created a framework through state labour departments to ensure that those trained in the industrial training institutes get employment,” a ministry official, requesting anonymity, said.

The HRD does similar work. "Vocational education is run by educational institutions and managed by All India Council for Technical Education. I don’t understand how the youth affairs ministry would be able to issue directions to educational institutions," said a HRD ministry official.

Most of them also admitted that losing job oriented skill programmes would result in major reduction in their annual budgets with ministries of rural development and labour bearing the maximum brunt.

The rural development (RD) ministry got Rs 1,400 crore in the last budget for its skill programme Aajeevika, which is run by district RD officers by enrolling self-help groups. “Close to a million self-help groups are part of the programme,” an RD ministry official said. It also has specialized schemes for unemployed youth in J-K and Maoist-hit areas. The urban development ministry runs similar programmes in the cities and was allocated Rs 100 crore.

UPA-2, near the end of its tenure, had put the finance ministry in charge of coordinating with all ministries on skill development via the national skill development agency. It had set a target to train 11 million youth in 2014-15 and 500 million youth by 2020.

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

Follow India news real-time updates and the latest news covered on Hindustan Times, featuring today's critical updates on Sonam Wangchuk Hunger Strike LIVE and more across India.