Launching the Skill India Mission in the national capital, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the war against poverty will be won by his army of poor.
Linking skill development to his government’s war against poverty, Modi said that India has the potential to emerge as the human resource capital of the world, just as China has become a global manufacturing factory. “We have to map the requirements of the entire world and then provide human resources to them,” Modi said. The Mission will provide the overall institutional framework to rapidly implement and scale up skill development efforts across India. The mission has set a target to skill 24 lakh workers this year and 40.2 crore workers by 2022. It will be led by a governing council, which will be chaired by the PM and include ministers for finance, skill development and entrepreneurship, human resource development, rural development, labour and employment, overseas affairs, information technology, deputy chairman of NITI Aayog and three chief ministers. The PM also launched the new National Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Policy 2015, Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana and a skill loan scheme to encourage more youth to take up vocational training.