Skill Development Cannot Be Seen In Isolation

Union minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy’s keynote address calls for a holistic approach towards skill education.

The person who drove you here, the person who fixed your cup of tea — they are all a larger part of the ecosystem of skills. These people never had a formal training for their jobs and a large business enterprise depends on these very people to make it successful.

I represent a parliamentary constituency with 1.5 million voters in a remote area of Bihar. But only 3,000-4,000 people have the provision of piped potable water system, 98% do not have toilets and so on and so forth.

We have done a lot of positive things, but when you look at this country, there are a lot of grievances and complaints against the system. Over the past 67 years we did not pick up the pace as we should have, but we caught up really well in the past two years. We have a huge challenge to build up an ecosystem, which includes a smart country, smart politicians and smart enterprises. This is a smart India which we are building politically and it’s taking a while. I have a small ministry called Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, and I have one vertical in it called the ITI. It is the backbone of industrial training in this country existing since 1956. We have more than 2.2 million students enrolled in them comprising fitters, welders and mechanics.