Skill ministry working on unified database of skilling centres: MSDE Secy

MSDE Secretary Debashree Mukherjee said the ministry is building a common database of skilling centres to improve coordination and benchmark quality standards

The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) is working on creating a database of skilling centres across the country, including those run by government, industry, and private players, to address fragmentation in India’s skill development ecosystem, Skill Secretary Debashree Mukherjee said on Monday.

 

Speaking at the CII Annual Business Summit 2026, Mukherjee said one of the key challenges in the skilling ecosystem was the absence of shared information despite multiple actors — industries, CSR programmes, colleges, and institutions.

 

“We are now trying to put together a database of centres of excellence in skilling, run both by industry, government, and private sector so that it is available to everybody to show what are the gold standards on skill development,” Mukherjee said.

   

The ministry is now attempting to build a database of “centres of excellence” in skilling across sectors that can serve as benchmarks for quality training.

 

Mukherjee said the government has not yet been able to make significant progress in expanding apprenticeships in the micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSME) sector and is exploring strategies to improve participation. She said MSME associations could collectively handle the classroom and assessment components of apprenticeship programmes in locations where MSME clusters exist.

 

“The challenge is that we've not been able to make a major headway in the MSME sector. We are trying to find strategies in terms of how to bring in the MSME sector into the apprenticeship programme and my request is to look at the clusterisation model,” said Mukherjee.

 

She also urged large companies to leverage their ancillary networks to bring more apprentices into the system, describing apprenticeships as a “win-win” for both employers and trainees.

 

The Centre has been pushing apprenticeship-based training as part of its broader skilling strategy through the National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (NAPS), launched in 2016 under the MSDE. The scheme, which has an outlay of ₹10,000 crore, provides financial incentives to employers by reimbursing part of the stipend paid to apprentices and sharing basic training costs. Alongside NAPS, the government also runs the National Apprenticeship Training Scheme (NATS), administered by the education ministry, which focuses on apprenticeships for graduates, diploma holders, and technically qualified youth.

 

At the same time, Mukherjee cautioned against misuse of apprentices as low-cost labour. “There have been reports that frequently apprentices are not really taught. Even in public sector organisations, I’ve heard reports that people take apprentices in a sector and then they are put into HR roles. So that's really not what we are looking for,” she said, adding that the ministry was working on strengthening assessment systems to ensure trainees acquired actual skills.

 

Mukherjee raised concerns over conditions for migrant workers, noting that many young workers from eastern states migrate to western and southern India for jobs paying ₹14,000-15,000 a month.

 

“Much of our young population are in the eastern states and the jobs are in the west and the south. So if we expect them to come to Bombay and Chennai for ₹14,000-15,000, what kind of life are we subjecting them to?” she said, calling for discussions around safe housing and support systems for migrant workers.

 

Mukherjee also identified rapidly changing job requirements and the difficulty of matching skill supply with labour demand as major concerns for the skilling ecosystem.

 

“The jobs are changing as we speak, and this change is much faster than that confronted by previous generations,” she said, adding that governments and industries still struggle to anticipate where investments and jobs will emerge and what kinds of workers will be required.

 

Additionally, the ministry is also working on a special programme for women entrepreneurs, focused on girls’ colleges, higher education institutions, ITIs, and women in the rural sector, she said.

 

“So we're looking at a very focused programme and we would like the industry to come and tell us what things should be done and what is the right way of doing things,” she added.