Tag: Modi government

Only three out of ten skilled under Skill India Mission found jobs in FY18

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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One big push towards employment and employability was the Skill India program launched in 2015, by the Modi government.

The aim of this mission was to skill India’s youth with “industry-relevant” training and help them secure a better livelihood with a target to skill over one crore people in the next three years.

CNBC-TV18 filed an RTI to find out if the Skill India mission is on track to achieve its targets. Not really, reveals data. While there has been a big push on skill development, finding jobs has been the sore point.

Watch: 4 Years of Modi Government: Has the Skill India mission been successful so far?

Here is what the RTI data reveals.

There is a substantial increase in the number of people who were skilled in FY17 and FY18. It has risen more than four times times, from over 3.5 lakh people in FY17 to nearly 16 lakh people in FY18. But not every one who is getting skilled is getting placed.

In FY17 just over half of those skilled managed to find jobs and in FY18 this fell below 30%, meaning just about 3 out of every 10 person who undertook the Skill India mission in FY18 found a job. So there is a 4-fold increase in those getting trained but only a 2-fold increase in those finding jobs.

The data received through RTI has been compiled from two short term training schemes: One, Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) 2015-16, that had some spillovers in next fiscal and another, an extension of this is the  PMKVY 2016-20 where the government targets to skill 1 crore youth. It has budgeted 12,000 crore rupees for PMKVY 2.0.

Let’s break this down into sectors now.

Agriculture, the largest contributor to G-D-P saw a 2-fold rise in those trained but placements were not forthcoming. Only 37% found jobs in FY18.

Labour intensive sectors like leather saw a drop in the number of people who got skilled and those who found jobs. Over 5,400 people were trained in FY17 in leather sector but this dropped to about 3,000 in FY18. Moreover, only 42% of those skilled found jobs in FY18 in the sector.

In the textiles space, The number of people trained in FY18 compared to FY17 has halved and only 55% found jobs in FY18.

In capital goods there is an almost 5-fold jump in the number of people trained from FY17 to FY18 but only 23% found a job in FY18. Leather, textiles and capital goods are all export-driven sectors and jobs are scarce in all 3 of them, clearly indicating the state of the economy.

Two sectors where the government has made a big push for training and developing skills has been electronics and IT. In electronics, there is a 11-fold rise in the number of people trained from FY17 to FY18 but, there is only a 5-fold increase in jobs with 25% of those trained finding placements in FY18.

The IT industry is mirroring the electronics sector where once again a 11-fold increase in those getting trained but only 2 out of 10 trained in this sector found a job.

A recent report from research agency Crisil also alluded to this point. “Labour-light sectors have expanded faster than labour intensive ones over the last few years. Thus, the faster-growing sectors have offered fewer employment opportunities. This trend intensified in fiscals 2017 and 2018, when the economy was in the throes of a slowdown.”

With GST-related glitches hurting exports, labour intensive sectors have seen a sharp deceleration. This suggests employment conditions, too, would have suffered. Skill India’s RTI data corroborates this.

Experts say even the consumer electronics sector has been hit by imports and while Make in India held out a promise, progress has been slow. So while multiple investments have been committed very few have materialized on ground and in turn jobs growth has also been skewed.

The real success of Skill India Mission will not be when all are skilled, but when all skilled find relevant jobs. Hence, an equal push needs to be creating jobs.

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India to build sugar stockpile to cut surplus supplies in market

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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 India will build government stockpiles of sugar to cut a surplus in the market, two official sources said on Tuesday, a move that will prop up local prices and help money-losing mills pay dues to millions of cane growers, a key voting bloc.

The cabinet of Prime Minister Narendra Modi would soon approve a plan to create “buffer stocks” of 3 million tonnes of sugar to suck the extra supply out of the domestic market and to stave off a free fall in prices, one of the sources said.

Buffer stocks refer to government-held purchases.

Other than creating buffer stocks of sugar, the government could look at other means of supporting prices, said the second source. The sources, directly involved in policy making, sought anonymity in line with government policy.

A Food Ministry spokesman declined to comment.

India, where sugar output usually yo-yos, has created buffer stocks in the past to tackle a supply glut.

Once India approves the plan to build buffer stocks, sugar mills, saddled with excess supplies, will stock the sweetener in their warehouses and the government will pay the carrying costs for the commodity, the sources said.

The plan would cost around 12.15 billion rupees ($178.49 million) to the government, they said.

Other than the creation of the buffer stock, the government could also look at giving cheap loans to sugar mills to expand their ethanol production capacity, the sources said.

India, the world’s biggest sugar producer after Brazil, is likely to churn out a record 30.3 million tonnes of the sweetener in the 2017/18 season that ends on Sept. 30, up from 20.3 million tonnes in the previous year.

A sharp jump in output has led to a drop in local sugar prices to their lowest level in 28 months, making it difficult for mills to pay farmers mandatory cane prices.

As a result, sugar mills now owe nearly 220 billion rupees which could leap to a record 250 billion rupees in the current 2017/18 season.

New Delhi scrapped a 20% tax on sugar exports in March, and in April asked mills to export 2 million tonnes of sugar to cut back inventories.

The government also decided to share some burden of sugar mills by approving a plan to provide financial support to cane farmers for produce sold to sugar mills.

The government is keen to placate India‘s 50 million cane growers, who make up an influential political lobby, especially with national elections barely a year away in May 2019.

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Modi government spend over Rs 4,300 crore on advertisements and publicity

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has so far splurged a whooping Rs 4,343.26 crore only for advertisements and publicity through different media, it has been revealed under RTI, an activist said here on Monday.

Mumbai-based RTI activist Anil Galgali had sought details from the centre’s Bureau of Outreach and Communication (BOC) on all spend on advertisement and publicity in all media since the present government assumed office.

The replies provided by Financial Advisor, BOC, Tapan Sutradhar on the expenses incurred since June 2014, were a revelation on the massive spends, but owing to all-round criticism of the government, there was a small reduction — almost Rs 308 crore — in 2017, said Galgali.

As per the replies, from June 2014 to March 2015, the government spent Rs 424.85 crore in print publicity, Rs 448.97 crore on electronic media and Rs 79.72 crore on outdoor publicity, totalling to Rs 953.54 crore.

In the next fiscal 2015-16, the spending increased substantially for all media. These included, Rs 510.69 crore on print media, Rs 541.99 crore on electronic media and Rs 118.43 crore on outdoor publicity, or a total of Rs 1,171.11 crore.

In 2016-17, the expenditure incurred on print medium dropped (yet higher than the first year June 2014-March 2015), to Rs 463.38 crore, but for the electronic medium it increased over the previous year to Rs 613.78 crore, and catapulted to Rs 185.99 crore on outdoor publicity, totalling to Rs 1,263.15 crore.

The next year, April 2017-March 2018, there was a sharp drop in spending on electronic media over the previous year to Rs 475.13 crore and a significant drop in outdoor publicity expenses to Rs 147.10 crore.

The RTI replies also said that between April-December 2017 (nine-month period), the government spent Rs 333.23 crore on the print medium alone, with the total figure of last fiscal (April 2017-March 2018) coming to Rs 955.46 crore.

“A detailed analysis proves that after stringent criticism it attracted, especially from the opposition and on social media, over squandering of scarce public resources, the government finally cut down on its publicity expenditure this year by Rs 307.69 crore,” Galgali told IANS.

However, he pointed out that the total spending of last financial year is still significantly higher than the present government’s first year in office when it spent Rs 953.54 crore in just nine months in office.

He added that although it is okay for the government to spend on publicity wherever genuinely required, in case of excess expenses, reins must be tightened and the authorities must publicise all such expenditure on its websites.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow