Gujarat state is on the same path to achieving the goal as the Prime Minister, who wants India to be a global leader and is therefore working to make India future-ready through various “future skill” programmes for the younger generation.
The state government’s Gujarat Skill Development Mission (GSDM), which comes under Labour, Skill Development and Employment Department, is in the process of upscaling and rescaling skills of youth of Gujarat.
The Labour, Skill Development and Employment Department is planning to create unique identities (IDs) for students who take the basic courses for futuristic skill ready and digitally fluent with options for more than 100 courses.
As per a department source, under GSDM the officials are examining the proposals for offering further subsidies for the courses that are being offered by the state government in collaboration with central programmes and players like National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM).
Principal Secretary of Labour, Skill Development & Employment Department, Dr Anju Sharma said, “The unique Ids that will be created for these students or other participants, joining the basic course, their progress will be tracked. Later, based on their progress, if these students/participants pursue advances related to futuristic courses then we may be in the position to support them financially by offering them subsidies on the course fees.”
According to Sharma, they are already running about 51 different courses for skill developments and for this year they have kept a budget of Rs 78 crore for the same. So, they will see under which programmes these collaborations can be done.
One of the programmes that NASSCOM is running with the central government is ‘FutureSkills Prime’ – an industry-led government-approved skilling ecosystem platform with a vision to upskill/reskill every Indian citizen in emerging technologies to enhance employability and stay relevant.
The FutureSkills Prime programme was launched in 2021 and now has over 8 lakh learners, 36% of whom are women and 80% are youth. Similarly, many private universities in Gujarat are taking advantage of it.
In terms of employability, NASSCOM claims that a “letter of engagement” has been signed with the Indian Staffing Federation, TechM, and Accenture in order to connect the dots between demand and supply.