Chai and Conversation: India Skills - Connecting Demography to Development

Venue: Seminar Room, Australia India Institute, The University of Melbourne

Presenters: Dr Divya Nambiar

By 2025, almost 1 in 5 of the world’s working age population will be Indian. 12 million young, aspiring Indians enter the Indian workforce every year. Skill development has therefore emerged as a key policy priority to leverage India’s demographic dividend and drive economic and social development in the country.

In July 2015, the Government of India launched the 'Skill India' initiative, which seeks to equip over 400 million young Indians with job-oriented skills to enhance their employability. For the first time, a wide range of new policy and programme initiatives were launched to rapidly scale up skill training initiatives for the country’s youth.

This talk uses 'Skill India' as a prism to explore four key questions.

· What is unique about India’s skills challenge? How is India managing it?

· How do young people experience and encounter skill training programmes?

· How does the vision of the 'Skill India' programme connect with the aspirations of young Indian citizens?

· What challenges are encountered when connecting demography to development?

Through an exploration of these questions Dr Divya Nambiar provides insights into the nature of the contemporary Indian state.

Dr Nambiar is Senior Consultant, at the office of the Union Secretary, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Government of India.

from
https://events.unimelb.edu.au/events/7347-chai-and-conversation-india-skills-connecting-demography-to-development