Skills and knowledge are a prerequisite to the social and economic growth of any country, and people with higher skill standards adjust more effectively to changes influenced by overwhelming waves of globalisation. Many developing countries are currently grappling with the critical challenge of how best to skill their population. This is more so in India, which has the world’s largest youth population and will have the world’s largest workforce by 2020.

Effective policy intervention could, ideally, provide the country’s youth with the choices necessary to move towards a better life. Recognising the challenge, the central government launched the Skill India initiative in 2015 under the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) with an aim to train over 40 crore people by 2022. To put this in perspective, less than 5 per cent of the country’s total workforce has had skill training as of the beginning of this year.

Let’s take a look at how the government’s flagship scheme is faring.

The MSDE’s 2016-17 annual report reveals that by December 2016, only 18.52 per cent (463,221 of 1,250,000 people) of the target demographic had been trained by the ministry in the 2016-17 fiscal and 814,000 people of a target of 1,375,000 people (59.20 per cent) received entrepreneurship training.

With close to 50 skill development schemes coordinated between 20 departments across ministries, the creation of a nodal ministry to overlook progress was a step in the right direction, but the picture still remains bleaker than one would imagine. By March 2017, the MSDE had spent only 41.79 per cent of its budget (revised estimates) for the entire financial year of 2016-17.

Problems in skilling haven’t been restricted to the previous fiscal alone. In 2015-16, the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) had a target of training 14 lakh youth in the country apart from 10 lakh beneficiaries under the ‘recognition of prior learning’ category. By March 2016, 17.89 lakh youth had been enrolled across the country, of which 11.87 lakh had completed training and only 55,712 youth had been placed in a company.

The situation in North Eastern states, Daman and Diu, Andaman and Nicobar Islands was more dire where, of 44,798 candidates in March 2016, only 1,367 candidates had been placed.

There isn’t much to cheer about in the 2016-17 fiscal either.