Somewhat surprisingly across India, the lead in promoting vocational education and training (VET) in a big way has been taken by the eastern seaboard state of Odisha and its BJD government led by the Doon School & St. Stephen’s College educated Naveen Patnaik, serving an unprecedented third term in office as chief minister – Autar Nehru One of the major blindspots of post-independence India’s dysfunctional education system is vocational education and training (VET). Curiously, the omniscient czars of the Soviet-inspired Planning Commission, established soon after independence from almost 200 years of rapacious British rule over the Indian subcontinent, accorded low priority to education and human capital development, and even lower priority to VET. Despite central planners in the Soviet Union according to high importance to education — especially primary education — their Indian disciples were unconvinced. Annual investment (Centre plus states) in human capital development in post-independence India has averaged 3.5 percent of GDP and never exceeded 4 percent despite the high-powered Kothari Commission (1966) strongly recommending 6 percent of GDP. The socio-economic impact of continuous under-investment in human capital development for seven decades is that the country’s population has tripled because central planners were unaware that “education is the best contraceptive”. Moreover, with the majority rural population at best functionally literate, agriculture yields are pathetically low despite over-use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides which has resulted in despoliation of soil across vast stretches of land. In Punjab — the breadbasket state of India — per-hectare wheat and rice yields are one-fifth of China’s and one-tenth of France and the US. In Indian industry, the outcome of poor quality education in general and VET, in particular, is low productivity of shop floor and technical workers — a mere tenth of industrial workers in OECD countries. The foolishly neglected issue of VET entered the radar of government and policy makers after the dirigiste red-tape bound Indian economy was partially liberalised and deregulated in 1991. This was mainly due to the efforts of iWatch (estb.1992), an NGO registered by IIT-Bombay alumnus Krishan Khanna who quit a promising career in India Inc (Crompton Greaves) to promote the cause of VET. Subsequently, in the new millennium a small band of prescient educationists (and EducationWorld) began highlighting this gaping lacuna in the country’s education system and connected it with rock-bottom productivity of Indian agriculture, industry and labour. In 2009, the Congress-led UPA-II government belatedly established the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) with the mandate to rapidly skill the country’s population. NSDC’s mission was to build a sustainable ecosystem and promote skills development through provision of long-term loans to private sector VET firms, set up sector skill councils with employer engagement to prescribe standards and benchmarks, accredit training institutions to certify trainees, and encourage industry to employ trained personnel. However, a decade later, NSDC has had limited success with allegations that it recklessly awarded loans and contracts to private VET partners providing sub-standard training and courses. Moreover, the BJP/NDA government’s flagship Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), launched…
