Scope of Skill Development in Agriculture
Suryapal Singh1 and Harshita Singh2
1Guest Faculty, Shri Vishaw Karma Skill University, Dudhola Palwal (Haryana)
2Ph D Scholar, CCS HAU Hisar
All the activities were at standstill during lockdown except agricultural operations. This signifies the importance of agriculture and its allied sectors. The huge migration of agriculture labour out of fear to their parental places who have acquired knowledge of different agricultural operations in due course of time with practice left a temporary vacuum of human resource in agriculture. A need was felt that to feed 135 million Indian populations and keep them well fed agriculture has to be in dynamic state. Although the techniques developed and mechanization came to rescue of farmers but not to the desired level but attracted the attention to develop skill in agriculture sector. India is short of skilled human resource in agriculture and we are still performing with traditional knowledge. Need emerged to develop skill necessitated to think on these line. Visionary people put forth the formation of Skill Ministry. Under the umbrella of this ministry many sectors were covered. As per the report of ICAR out of 18.5% landless labrouers in Agriculture only 0.5% are skilled. Govt of India felt need to form a Body of agriculture skill and Agriculture Skill Council was formed under Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship with the following objectives.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare has made rapid strides towards realizing the dream of Prime Minister “Kaushal Bharat Se Kushal Bharat” The central government believes that there is a need to develop agriculture as a private enterprise and attract youth in this direction.The central agriculture ministry is mainly working for it at four levels
Increasing productivity Through:
1 Post-harvest crop:management and to provide the farmers with a reasonable price for their produce.
2 Conduct schemes related to risk reduction in agriculture.
3 Emphasis on developing activities like other sources of income of farmers such as horticulture, animal husbandry, beekeeping, dairy and fisheries.
In view of the latest development in agriculture, many new dimensions have emerged for the youth. These include dimensions like agri-warehousing, cold-chain, supply-chain, dairy, poultry, fisheries, horticulture, agricultural mechanization and micro irrigation.
Skill development programs of 200 hours duration were organized in different Krishi Vigyan Kendras and National Training Institutes. A large number of youth were trained through these programs crores were spent on this under the National Agricultural Development Scheme.
A provision of Rs 2 crore has been made for skill development training in the year 2017-18, while it is proposed to increase this amount to Rs 17 crore in the year 2018-19. There is a need to make 100% self-employment and employment ratio due to less network of agriculture based industry in rural areas.
There is a need to conduct a national and state level study by the Agricultural Council of India (ASCI) to analyze the skills gap in agriculture.Prime Minister’s Skill Development Scheme was initiated.Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana -PMKVY is a major scheme for skill training of youth. Under this, special emphasis is laid on improvement in courses, better teaching and trained teachers.Training also includes behavioral skills and behavior change among other aspects.
key points are:
The scheme is being implemented through the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC). Under this, 24 lakh youth will be brought under training.Skills training will be based on the National Skill Qualification Framework (NSQF) and the criteria set by the industry. The major programs implemented such as Make in India, Digital India, National Solar Energy Mission and Swachh Bharat Abhiyan will also be taken into consideration while setting the goal of skill development.
Under the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana, the emphasis will be mainly on people entering the labor market for the first time and focusing on the dropout students especially during class 10 and 12. The scheme will be implemented by training partners of NSDC. Presently NSDC has 187 training partners in about 2,300 centers. Training providers related to the central and state governments will also be added for training under this scheme.
All training providers have to go through a screening process to be eligible for this scheme. Under this scheme, the Sector Skill Council and the State Governments will also monitor the skill training programs. A new National Skill and Enterprise Development Policy has also been prepared to include all the measures taken in this direction. Through this policy, a roadmap to promote development with a high quality workforce is being prepared. Under this, a target has been set to train 500 million people by the year 2022.
Different Sector Skill Councils are:
Agriculture Skill Council of India,Apparel Made-Up and Home Furnishing Sector Skill Council Beauty and wellness ,BFSI, Capital Good Skill Council, Construction Skill Development Council, Domestic Workers SSC, SSC,Telecom Sector Skill Council, Strategic Manufacturing Sector Skill and so on there are 29 Sector Skill Councils
Haryana created First Skill University at Dudhola Palwal and this university is imparting skills in different sectors and Admissions are open now in different streams providing Master, Graduation and diploma courses in different schemes. Earn while learn and on job training along with courses is a unique feature(svsu.ac.in)
