SKILL DEVELOPMENT

The decision to place the national skill development policy before the union cabinet shortly is a welcome initiative.The National Skill dDevelopment Corporation will commence its opeartions from 1st september 2008,it is learnt.
Skills and talents are vital for performance and progress.Skills and talents must be developed in all spheres of activities and across all sectors on a national scale.We need skills in such areas as planning,teaching,governance,handling and management of all types of risks,project formulation,implementation skills,monitoring skills,oratory skills,P.R skills,information technolgy,programming skills,painting ,farm management,horticulture,energy conservation,and so on.With better skills even micro finance and self help groups and SMEs as well as agriculture can be managed in a better way and greater results can be obtained.Basic education is a pre-requisite for building skills and hence education must be given primacy by centre and all states and spendings on and allocations for education must be enhanced.
Setting up of more and more institutes of excellence such asIITs,AIMs,management institutes,and statrting of skill and talent development -oriented courses in all colleges can be of great help in this regard.We must aim at education revolution as recently stated by our Prime Minister Dr.Manamohan Singh to provide a fillip to skill development.What we must aim at is creation of a variety of skills in abundance The degrees and qualifications to be given by our institutes of excellence must beome globally recognised degrees and qualifications..The launching of NationalTalent Development Corporation is a welcome initiative in this regard. Private sector too can play an important role in area of skill development.Corporates can start Skill development institutes .Two or more corporates can join hands and launch such institutes .Private universities such as deemed universities can take major initiatives in this regard.Skill development must be an area of emphasis at the state level also.Each boy and girl has some latent skill or talent which has to be identified and developed by conscious effort and training.To achieve this we must encourage boys and girls to select courses of study based on their aptitude and not as dictated by parents or teachers or on the basis of selection of other students in the batch.The mad rush for electronics and communication stream of engineering is but the reflection of this and the rush is not based on aptitudes of students.States must also take initiative in this matter and launch state level Skill development institutes through public private partnership.Skill development in all areas and sheres of activities and across all sectors will surely help promote and enhance productivity and the same will enable the country to reap rich demographic dividend.