Smriti may lead new department of skill development

Human resource development minister Smriti Irani is likely to be put in charge of a new department of skill development and entrepreneurship, one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet projects.

Updated on: Aug 5, 2014, 01:41:46 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Human resource development minister Smriti Irani is likely to be put in charge of a new department of skill development and entrepreneurship, one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet projects.

The department will ensure speedy and quality training to India’s youth, making them more employable. It will be carved out of 21 ministries dealing with the Centre’s skill development programmes, and focus on Modi’s mantra of 3S — Scale, Speed and Skill.

The programme will target massive skill upgradation of the youth, who, studies say, aren’t competitive in the job market due to poor training.

The project could be put under 38-year-old Irani, one of Modi’s youngest ministers, after cabinet secretary Ajit Seth met a couple of times last month with ministries dealing with the issue. No final decision has been taken, sources said.

The ministry of sports and youth affairs was planned to run the department initially, but was deemed not “technically equipped” to deal with such a massive programme. The ministry itself was reluctant due to an absence of domain knowledge, sources said.

There was a view that the HRD ministry was best suited for the job as it handles education at all levels with close linkage to skill development, said a senior official. “The ministry can introduce skill-development-linked curriculum in schools that can help in meeting the target,” he added.

The first indication of such a change came when the government approved guidelines for the National Employment Enhancement Mission, to be implemented by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

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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