Skilling Juggernaut
India has embarked on the world's biggest skill development programme. Can this bridge the talent gap?

- Mar 20, 2017,
- Updated Mar 24, 2017 4:32 PM IST
When Shruti Malik drives past farmland being ploughed on the outskirts of Yamunanagar, Haryana, she has reason to feel proud. She knows one of the men on the tractors at work was once her student at IRIS Learning, the skilling institute she runs in the town, which has so far trained 2,400 young people in sugarcane cultivation, polyhouse farming and the use of different kinds of agricultural implements. After a month-long training stint at IRIS, Rakesh Sandhu bought a tractor with a loan from the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojna - a scheme to facilitate micro business ventures begun in 2016 - which he hires out (with himself as driver) for a fee to farmers around Yamunanagar who need their fields ploughed.
When Shruti Malik drives past farmland being ploughed on the outskirts of Yamunanagar, Haryana, she has reason to feel proud. She knows one of the men on the tractors at work was once her student at IRIS Learning, the skilling institute she runs in the town, which has so far trained 2,400 young people in sugarcane cultivation, polyhouse farming and the use of different kinds of agricultural implements. After a month-long training stint at IRIS, Rakesh Sandhu bought a tractor with a loan from the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojna - a scheme to facilitate micro business ventures begun in 2016 - which he hires out (with himself as driver) for a fee to farmers around Yamunanagar who need their fields ploughed.