The finance ministry has started the process of setting up the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC). It has decided to contribute Rs 1,000 crore towards the initial corpus of the NSDC. To this end, finance minister P Chidambaram plans to hold a meeting with the representatives of various ministries and trade and industry associations on August 19.
One of the key principles of NSDC is that it should be led by private-sector. The mission of NSDC is to open up the ?skill economy? to make it market led. One of its major tasks will be to open institutes and polytechnics to impart skill training in various areas and managing their fund requirements.
NSDC will be registered as a not-for-profit company under Section 25 of the Companies Act, 1956. It will operate as a public company with limited liability, 51% of which shall be subscribed by private sector. The private sector shall have the right to appoint a majority of the directors on the board. This will ensure effective private sector participation in the management of the corporation.
One of the strategies of NSDC will be to establish sector skills councils that will help develop sector-specific competency standards and qualifications, consistent with the proposed national vocational qualification framework. NSDC will establish sector-specific, labour market information systems and human resource planning models at national, state and sub-state levels.
This step has been taken by the Centre to increase the efficiency of the workforce. The size of the Indian labour workforce is 400 million, 65% of which is in the age group of 15-29 years. In this group, the percentage that receives formal and non-formal vocational training is just 2% and 8% in comparison to 60% and 96% in the developed nations.