Keeping up with UP: Push for skilling as rising joblessness shapes poll agenda

GRow unemployment has been among the francis scott key election issues. It was an supply during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and remains i forward of the Bihar assembly polls this year. Apart from unemployment, there is also a significant unorganised sector. According to the 2024-2025 Economic Survey, over 305.1 million unorganised workers had registered on the E-Shram portal created for the delivery of welfare and social security benefits to them.Survival is hard for millions of unemployed youths, renewing focus on employment generation in the states headed for polls over the next two to three years. Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has offered jobs in the government and private sectors. He has also promised better salaries for contractual workers. The opposition has been assailing the government over its failure to create jobs in the state, which is larger than many countries.There is a realisation that the anger over joblessness needs to be addressed before it works against governments. Unemployment is the main challenge for the Janata Dal (United)-led National Democratic Alliance government in Bihar. Rashtriya Janata Dal and Jan Suraj leaders Tejashwi Yadav and Prashant Kishore have raised the issue in virtually every speech.Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ideological fount, appears to have understood restlessness among the youth over unemployment. Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS chief, has repeatedly emphasised fostering entrepreneurial skills to reduce dependence on government jobs. He has suggested setting up decentralised employment training programmes in every district.This realisation in the RSS sank in when migrant workers desperately headed for their villages on foot or bicycles as their survival became impossible in cities during the Covid-19 pandemic. The Union government had by then announced a National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship in 2015 and launched the Skill Development Mission, integrating agencies working in the area.The need to develop blue-collar skills was felt soon after migrants started moving to their homes, even as the gap between demand and supply of skilled manpower had persisted.Former National Skill Development Corporation chief executive officer Jayant Krishna says it is high time the government revamps its Skill India Mission, as the demographic dividend is not endless and would start diminishing with the decline in population in the next three decades. He believes India must focus on incentivising apprenticeship, making skills aspirational, mainstreaming employability skills, and moving from a supply-focused skilling ecosystem to a demand-driven one.Skilled India remains a distant dream. Apart from the government initiatives for it, the RSS-affiliated Samarth Bharat has been training semi-educated youth with skills. Samarth Bharat has even been training girls for beauty parlours, including nail painting, after studying the demand for blue-collar jobs.Bharat Ji, an RSS leader who conceived the idea of imparting training to make people self-sufficient, said he thought of the idea while distributing food packets to the migrants leaving Delhi during the pandemic. He said the government was doing its job, but they also felt society should contribute.Samarth Bharat sought help from like-minded people in getting buildings, equipment, and trainers. It is now running 40 centres across the country. Bharat Ji said it was not easy to find trainers when everyone is seeking jobs.Rakesh Kumar, the co-coordinator of the initiative, called the blue-collar jobs aspirational. He said some of their trainees do not even earn ₹1 lakh monthly but have become employers.The first such training centre for AC repairing was opened in Delhi’s Ashok Nagar in October 2021. Similar centres have since been established in Lucknow, Ludhiana, Panvel, Gurgaon, Jodhpur, and Jaipur. More were coming up in Bihar, Varanasi, Chhattisgarh, and West Bengal for truck mechanics and plumbers, etc. In Jind, they are setting up two training centres for welding and AC repairing, with the help of an Industrial Training Institute. They are also planning to provide an online service provider in 16 states.Many of these training centres are in slums and attract rural unemployed youth who generally lack interest in farming. At a Samarth Bharat meeting in Lucknow in 2024, the organisation decided to expand this network across India in the next two years.