Govt eyes making India the world's skilled youth hub: Pradhan

The government's ambition is to transform India into the world's skilled youth hub and more organised efforts will be made to create a pool of quality manpower to cater to the needs of countries, Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said today.

"This is the beginning, in the future more organised effort will be there. Entire Europe, entire GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) area, South East Asia needs quality manpower so India is a natural choice," the minister said on the sidelines of an event.

He felicitated the first batch of interns trained under the Indo-Japan Technical Intern Training Programme at a programme organised by CII here.

During the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Japan in November 2016, India and Japan had concluded a memorandum of cooperation on skill development under the Manufacturing Skill Transfer Promotion Programme.

The programme aims to train 30,000 persons over next 10 years with Japanese style manufacturing skills and practices.

"With the new framework today we have given authorisation, permission or endorsement to 22 quality organisations, this is just the beginning. My wish is that in 2018-19 this should expand to at least 100 agencies in different parts of the country," Pradhan said.

The minister said that after a few years, India should have the key to the skilled manpower in the world to create a new economic model for the country.

"We have agreed to create a new framework. This TITP framework is a very ambitious programme, Japan and India have a very old strategic relationship now we want to move to new areas,"Pradhan said.

These interns mostly hail from rural villages of southern Tamil Nadu. They belong to economically weaker sections of the society with average family income ranging from Rs 40,000 Rs 80,000 per annum. As per the program requirement, they come with an experience of 6 months to 1 year. Most of them were engaged in the manufacturing sector where they earned Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000 per month.

Under the programme, they will be earning almost Rs 60,000 to Rs 65,000 per month, post statutory deductions.

"Between 3 and 5 years of exposure in Japan, the interns will not only get a good stipend but also gather very valuable experience and come back with a formal Japanese certification in addition to the Indian certification. So this clearly is a mechanism which will push the Indian skilling ecosystem to a much higher order," Secretary in the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship K P Krishnan said.