Is Rural Skilling a Myth?

Is Rural Skilling a Myth?

India lives in its villages. More than half of the Indians are from the rural hinterlands and depend on agriculture for their livelihood. Being a backbone, the agriculture sector must be fostered to make our country and people self-sustainable. Further, in order to reap benefits from the demographic dividend of our country and to curb the overreaching of urban migration, village communities must be nurtured with necessary skill sets to grow with their own resources.

Though there are multiple impediments our group members unanimously opined that rural skilling is not a myth. It's possible and a need of this hour. We proposed a special vehicle "Rural Skill Wheels' to embrace the dream. Wheel is the symbol of change, progress and rustic. Our cohorts vouched for this through Rural Skill Wheels

Vision of Rural Skill Wheels: Creating Sustainable Villages through skilled community

An Introduction: 

Rural India has immense potential. Numerous indigenous products of India have a prodigious value in international as well as in the domestic market. It is all about connecting industries with these products through rural populace. This will bring about a sharp breakthrough in indigenous industry and manufacturing of the nation and enable rural communities to become self-dependent with economic empowerment. Furthermore, industries can hugely source rural manpower to fill the skill deficit. 

Aajeevika Skills, an ambitious scheme of government of India is to Making Rural Poor Youth Employable. 

This National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) is an initiative launched by Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD), Government of India. Also, The Aajeevika Skill Development Programme (ASDP) is a sub-mission under NRLM gives young people from poor communities an opportunity to upgrade their skills and enter the skilled work force in growing sectors of the economy. The target is to skill and place 50 lakhs youth in the formal sector by 2017. RISE India is an organization dedicated to to 'empower people' and 'enlighten lives' of socially and economically marginalized. Further, Saksham, Sabla, SGRY, Uddhan, DDU-GKY, PMKVY etc. in the government sector reiterates the need for rural skill development. Beyond any second that it can be articulated that rural skilling must be a key priority for the country. However, it requires and efficient mechanism to overcome various barriers in rural skilling.

In-order to propose a way ahead proposal in this context, the team subsumed the cahllneges to be resolved in this paradigm which are as follows-

Challenges in rural skilling

1. Lack of awareness about rural resources and skills
2. Lack of skiling infrastructure
3. Fund Shortage/lack of access to funds
4. Unavailability of an institutional mechanism
5. Lack of Technical Support
6. Lack of skilled trainers
7. Daily engagement
8. Considering the above challenges, it was proposed that
   
   Rural Skill Wheels Proposal
1. Identification and Mapping of Rural Resources (Skills, institutions, infrastructure and natural resources etc.)
2. Conduct a Skill Gap Study (In order to identify the rural skill deficit to utilize the local resources and to meet the local industry skill demands)
3. Development of Proposals/Plans (Considering the resource mapping and skill gap study, the Rural Skill Wheels Team will propose specific plans for skilling and self-employment)
4. Setting-Up of an Institutional Mechanism - The Rural Skill Wheel finds absence of a local institutional mechanism as the serious miss in the rural skilling. It proposed to set-up a LSG led institutional mechanism comprises of SHG members, women groups, community NGOs and other industry organizations to implement the scheme. This body looks after the training program, funding opportunities and skill infrastructure. 

Majorly, the institutional body solely for

a)   Innovative strategies to mobilize and sensitize local community to the skills.

b)   Avail and mobilize funds for the program

c)   Monitor Training

d)   Leadership role in identifying and setting up SDCs with the support of local industries, ITIs, ASAP, CSP etc.

e)   Ensure pro-active role of women community
Connect various stakeholders of skill development

5. Developing a professional team to market the products or to strengthen the supply chain especially through on-line mode. It is all about coordinating placement of rural trainees and marketing the rural products
6. Project Implementation
   It is equally a priority for the Rural Skill Wheels;
    

A.   It is a fact that most of the rural people are engaged in agriculture or allied activities in the day time; hence special skill training programs at evening/night is preferred. It may be helpful to overcome the shortage of trainers. Experienced people from the industry or volunteers can be availed for training.

B.   Sourcing CSR Funds for training. There are industries/organizations seriously consider placement linked training. It would be helpful for many rural people aspiring to get jobs

C.   Producers Group are a successful model to be emulated. Identifying potential business opportunities in the industry and providing raw materials

D.  Promotion of indigenous skills like handicrafts, art and culture etc. 

The Rural Skill Wheels is committed to skill the rural populace and greatly convinced to implement this model. The group envisages a situation where requirements of the village are being met at the local level and surplus resources/products skills are shared. 

Thank You,

The Rural Skill Wheels Team