UPA Govt all set to rejuvenate ITIs

Updated on: Friday, August 14, 2009

New Delhi: The ongoing war between private players and the state government over the control on modernization of Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) has ultimately led the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government to fund the process on its own.

The union government will allocate adequate fund to modernize the 1,896 ITIs across the nation, which at present enrolls more than five lakh students. The government is planning to invest Rs 5,291 crore to rejuvenate these institutes.

This includes Rs 1,581 crore from the World Bank and Rs 3,550 to be hopefully raised through the Public Private Partnership (PPP) model. The institutes were able to spend merely 7.35pc of allocated funds since 2007, while the government received just Rs 41.88 crore from the industry.

'The private partners were reluctant to invest as the state governments were not keen on sharing the control with them,' said a senior government official.

While reviving the National Skill Development Mission (NSDM), Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India declared in 2008 that the government is planning to adopt an industry-prescribed curriculum to make the pass-outs more employable.

With merely 2pc of the workforce being skilled, the employability of young Indians would be limited to only menial jobs if the number of skilled workforce did not grow substantially.

This may also affect India's ambition to lead in the service sector that offers the much-required thrust to the economy's overall growth of the country. Generating better and modern ITIs to meet the needs of industry was the foundation of the NSDM.

Its failure may raise alarm bells as the national workforce is likely to increase by 45 million over the Eleventh Plan Period (2007-2012) while the country needs to employ nearly 58 million people to meet public objectives.

UPA Govt all set to rejuvenate ITIs

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