Like Rip Van Winkle, after being in deep slumber for more than half a century, mandarins of the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry, Planning Commission and PMO (prime ministers office) have suddenly woken up to the socio-economic value of vocational education and training (VET). Mysteriously, the fact that almost every plumber, carp-enter, motor mechanic and electrician who serviced them for the past 50 years was an unqualified individual with slapdash on-the-job peer training even as 60-85 percent youth in the US, Germany, UK, South Korea and China were routinely getting VET certification, escaped the attention of post-independence Indias omni-scient Planning Commission which thus far has drawn up 12 detailed five-year plans running into millions of printed pages.However suddenly in 2006, following persistent complaints from India Inc about the fast-track Indian economy experien-cing a grave shortage of skilled shopfloor personnel, on Independence Day (August 15), prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh announced a major national drive to disseminate and upgrade VET. A few months later, a high-powered task force was constituted to draw up a roadmap for the national rollout of VET. The task force inter alia recommended promotion of 1,500 government-run industrial training institutes (ITIs) and 50,000 skills development centres by 2012. It also recommended establish-ment of a National Skills Development Corporation (NSDC) in the public-private partnership model with representative organisations of industry (FICCI, Assocham, CII etc) and the Union government to fund entrepren-eurs willing to promote VET institutions countrywide. The target: to skill and certify 550 million youth by the year 2020. That this time round government and industry are serious about establishing a VET infrastructure countrywide, was confirmed on March 18 when address-ing the annual global conclave of the news weekly India Today, the prime minister announced that within two months the country will embark on a skills development revolution which will touch the geographical length and breadth of the nation. Although he didnt elaborate, academics at the conclave interpreted this remark as a reference to a National Vocational Education Qualification Framework (NVEQF) which is being prepared by a group of state education ministers, and will be finalised by a Union HRD ministry-convened co-ordination comm-ittee by July 31. The core mandate of the state-level group of ministers and coordination committee is to draw up a contemporary VET framework offering guidelines and suggestions which will satisfy India Inc. While syllabuses and standards will be set by sectoral skills councils, NVEQF will set the guidelines for equivalence of mainstream education and VET to enable integration and mobility, says Dilip Chenoy, chief executive officer of NSDC. Adds Hari Menon, chief executive of India Skills, a VET joint venture between the Manipal Education Group and City and Guilds, Britains largest provider of work-related assessments and vocat-ional qualifications: The core issue is the legitimacy of vocational education. Currently the credibility of VET certification available is low and theres hardly any difference between those with certification and those without it as far as industry is concerned. There-fore the time has come to define job…
