A billion people are not necessarily an asset. You better be skilled. When the concept of industrial training institutes (ITIs) was first formed after Independence, the intention was to bridge the skill gaps in the workforce by providing training to the youth in India. This intent holds true even today.

The fact that there is a need in India for skills development is long established. As the director general of CII, Chandrajit Banerjee correctly notes, ?For every white collar job created, there are four corresponding blue collar jobs in the pipeline,? and therefore, progress would be a misnomer without paying attention to the training needs of these blue-collar workers.

According to the booklet brought out by CII in collaboration with pan-IIT Alumni, Getting Started ? Unleashing Skilled India: Transforming ITIs Together, ?Although ITIs (both public and private) are able to handle about 7 lakh people, the need is much deeper as studies have found that 44% of all workers are illiterate and another 23% had schooling only up to the primary level.?

The findings reveal that, ?in the age group of 20-24 years, only 5% of the Indian labour force had vocational skills, which was much lower than other countries like Mexico, where it was as high as 28%.?

After Independence, the government mandated some 6,000 ITIs across India. About 4,000 were set up as private-sector ITIs and are referred to as Industrial Training Centres (ITC). The remaining 1,900 ITIs-plus, which were run initially by the government, but since have slowly transitioned into a private public partnership (PPP) model involving government, industry and educational institutes as equal stakeholders.

These 1,900-plus have focused primarily on imparting skills related to manufacturing and engineering with very little or no focus on developing skills for the construction industry or the service industry. The idea of transitioning these 1,900-plus institutes into a PPP-model with an Institute Management Committee (IMC) first emerged in the late 1980s. The government intentionally experimented with four ITIs in North India. This initial experiment proved successful and in 2005, the government replicated the late 1980s model coming up with the PPP model for the remaining of these 1,900 ITIs.

Starting with 100 ITIs and basing it on the IMC model, the government started the PPP model. However, the IMC framework proved to be slow and sluggish because industry role in running the ITI was just an advisory role and the IMC lacked autonomy in training and fund allocation. This was the scenario in 2005.

Over the year 2006, the World Bank adopted 400 more it is, but these were also based on the IMC model. Soon the government realised they need to do something different within the PPP model. The answer lay in higher industry involvement and giving the IMCs more autonomy. The third stage of ITIs redefinition, which began in 2007, stacked up the remaining 1,400 or so in batches of 300, which are transitioning each year to the modified PPP version. These modifications were first initiated by the Haryana government and five ITIs in Haryana signed a tripartite MoU between the government and the industry and ITI?which was now converted into a society through registration so as to give it added financial flexibility.

Maruti, Sona Koya and Liberty Shoes are examples of companies in Haryana, which have adopted ITIs so that they can better serve their own needs and that of their industry. In order to enable the transformation, a sum of Rs 750-crore has been allocated by the Central government for these 1,400 it is. Of this, about Rs 2.5 crore has been set aside for the enhancement of each ITI and is given directly to the IMC. The ultimate allotment of an ITI to the industry, however, requires approval from the labour secretary.

This new initiative, started last year, has redesigned the role of the IMC, which will be on the driver?s seat as opposed to its earlier function, which was advisory in nature. During 2007, 300 ITIs successfully transitioned to the IMC model and 2,008 conversions are still in progress but should be complete by end-December. Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat are some of the states, which have given industry a free hand with ITIs this year.

Challenges faced by ITIs

Essentially, eligibility for admission for most courses in ITIs require students to clear class XII, but some courses even admit class VIII and class X students. Challenges for ITIs include complacent and inadequate number of trainers, principals and dated curriculum, with no revisions having taken place since the 1960s. All this has led to a continual focus in curriculum towards the manufacturing sector, neglecting the services sector, which has blossomed in recent decades.

Industry partnership at work

There has been improvement wherever industry has shown a direct interest and staked claim on ITIs. ?Maruti seeks to enhance technical training standards in India and make them at par with world standards, thereby increase the employability of trained students across industry,? says an official spokesperson for the company, which has adopted four ITIs in Haryana.

Maruti?s involvement looks at areas such as education infrastructure, training aids, training the trainer, imparting relevant training on related modern shop floor practices from Japan. It also provides a meritocracy-based scholarship called, ?Maruti Excellence Scholarship?. The company realises the reality of long gestation periods in such projects but the spokesman adds that the ?results so far have been encouraging?.

It is not necessary that ITIs in remote areas cannot be as successful as their counterparts in the bigger cities. Chindwara district in Madhya Pradesh is an example of a place where successful PPP training in construction has been made possible because of industry involvement from Punj Lloyd and L&T among others.