New Delhi: Youths in rural India will soon be imparted technical skills to become entrepreneurs and serve as village engineers under the Centre’s ambitious Atmnirbhar Bharat scheme. Armed with multi-disciplinary technical skills, these village engineers will not script their own success stories at their place of living, but also create job opportunities for numerous others.
Boyed by the success of a pilot project for Skilling Tribal Youth – Rural Tribal Technical Training or Grameen Udyami in Madhya Pradesh, the Central Government is set to replicate it to other parts of the country. The first batch of 140 tribal youths were provided technical training in various trades in Madhya Pradesh and awarded skill certificates at a function held at Rajbhawan on Thursday.
Minister of State for Skill Development & Entrepreneurship Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who attended the certificate distributional ceremony for the first batch of trainees in Bhopal virtually, said that the same model would be adopted to train youths of other districts across the country soon. Madhya Pradesh Governor Mangubhai Patel chaired the event.
Training was provided to beneficiaries in five disciplines- electrical and solar energy, agricultural mechanisation, e-governance, plumbing and masonry, two wheeler repair and maintenance. This training will also enable the youth to start their own business, thus generating more employment opportunities for other youth as well. The concept of multi skilling and turning unemployed youth into village engineers is first of its kind and shall be replicated in other districts.
The Union Minister said that the skill training would empower the tribal youth by making opportunities available – locally thereby reducing the pull and push for migration. “It shall trigger economic activities at local level in the districts, which are consistent with the new economic outlook of the Government that emphasises on self-reliance or AtmaNirbharta,” he added.
The pilot project, under the Sansadiya Sankul Pariyojana, was launched on 13th May 2022 for training about 250 beneficiaries of 17 clusters of 17 districts selected from 6 states of India – Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Odisha. It was launched in the presence of CM Madhya Pradesh Shivraj Singh Chouhan, MoS Rajeev Chandrasekhar, BL Santosh amongst other Dignitaries.
Government is giving priority to skilling as an important aspect to provide more opportunities to rural youth and to strengthen local village economies. A part of this push is creating district skilling plans for each of the 700 districts. The Central Government has appointed a Mahatma Gandhi National Fellow for each district, who will work with the local district collector as the district’s public representative in shaping skills according to local requirements. This will be divided into farm economy and non-farm economy.
