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ITI training doesn’t fetch jobs ……..Subodh Varma | TIG
Vocational education is one of the more neglected and below-theradar sectors within India’s education system. It is meant to produce skilled blue collar workers, who, in the prevailing ethos, are thought to be at a lower rung in the social hierarchy. Due to the same flawed reasoning, it has been given stepmotherly treatment by policy makers for long. Vocational education or training is under the purview of the Ministry of Labour and Employment. Through 5,499 Industrial Training Institutes (or Centres), having about 7.49 lakh seats, students are trained in 110 trades. About 50,000 seats are for women. Since vocational training is a concurrent subject — state as well as central governments have jurisdiction over it, the setting up and running of these ITIs is largely the responsibility of state governments. The central government decides policy, with the help of National Council for Vocational Training, an advisory body.
Besides the ITIs, there are about 500 polytechnics imparting similar training to over 65,000 students. Students can join ITIs after passing Class VIII while senior secondary is the requirement for polytechnics.
As with other stages and sectors of education, these figures appear impressive, till you compare them to the actual need. In India, the number of youths between 15 and 29 years of age is estimated at nearly 310 million. Among these, the number of persons trained in any formal or non-formal way is estimated at about 30 million, that is around 10%. This is an abysmally low figure and bodes ill for the future of a nation aspiring to become an economic colossus.
But the story doesn’t end there. A recent NSS report found that only about a fifth of these — about 6 million — had received formal training in vocational institutions. Another 3 million youth are currently undergoing such training.
A majority of the trained persons — over two thirds of them — have acquired their skills through non-formal means, getting no help from the education system. One third of them learnt the vocational skills from their family by what is called hereditary training. This mostly includes farming, fishing, handicrafts etc. The rest learnt on the job by working with more experienced hands.
But what about jobs, for which vocational education promises to help? Tracking those who had completed vocational training, the same NSS report came up with shocking results.
Nearly 18% of the formally trained youth were unemployed, while over a third were no longer in the workforce. This is twice the unemployment rate for the whole workforce, estimated at 9% by earlier NSS surveys.
And often, the trained persons were holding jobs that had no connection with what they were trained to do. This bizarre mismatch between vocational training and jobs is evident when one looks at the numbers. Significant proportions of beauticians and hairdressing or hotel trainees were doing farming (about 15% each) or agriculture trainees were working in the service sector (over 18%), and leather craft trainees were doing marketing (nearly 15%). The most popular field of training was computer trades attracting 31% of the students. But, nearly 17% of these were unemployed. Other popular trades included motor driving and mechanic and electronic/electrical among males, and textile among females.
The major reason for technically trained youths not getting jobs or working in mismatched occupations is declining jobs in the industrial sector. According to the latest Economic Survey employment in organized manufacturing fell from 5.1 million to 4.5 million in the private sector and from 1.53 million to 1.1 million in the public sector between 2000 and 2005.
The situation has been further aggravated by indiscriminate enrollment by private institutions as pointed out by an exhaustive study of 121 ITI/ITCs by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in 2003. It revealed that in surveyed districts of Orissa, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, the number of persons passing out as fitters, welders, electrician, etc. was twice the jobs available in the region. Irrelevance of some of the courses offered has led to nonutilisation of offered seats as shown by a survey done by industry body FICCI. It reported that there was under-utilisation of seats in as many as 35%, and significant shortage of staff in almost three quarters of the ITIs.
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