Population explosion is the major reason behind the burning issue of unemployment, and there’s a way to fight against unemployment which is making our workforce skilled. There’s available human resources in India but lacks skill. The government trying to solve the issue since Independence by implementing various employment generation schemes, one of them is Skill India Campaign, launched on 15 July 2015 by PM Narendra Modi, the scheme aims to train over 40 crore people in India in different skills by 2022.
One before the launch of SKILL INDIA the government introduced another scheme for empowering Rural youths living in poverty, which makes them skilled in different sectors as well as provides placements in different private sector organization.
The scheme was named as Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana (DDU-GKY) announced on 25th September 2014 by the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) as a part of NRLM a.k.a National Rural Livelihood Mission.
The vision of the program is to- “Transform rural poor youth into an economically independent and globally relevant workforce”
DDU-GKY currently has over 690 projects being implemented by 300 partners, it’s now active in 6,215 blocks in 568 district’s across 21 states and Union Territories. Over 2.7 Lakh candidates have been trained and over 1.34 Lakh candidates have been placed in jobs so in the course of the last financial year. From 2012, DDU-GKY has so far committed an investment of more than INR 5,600 Crores, impacting rural youth pan-India.
The program introduced by Modi govt is not a fresh and new as it seems actually it’s just an upgraded version of ‘AAJEEVIKA’ The central rural killing program launched by the previous government, the current government relaunched it with a new name ‘Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana’ with few minor changes including minimum age from 18 years to 15 years.
Main Objectives of the Yojana :
- To empower the rural youths living in poverty.
- To enhance the skill of the rural youths to make them employable.
- To eradicate poverty by providing placements to the rural youths after training them.
- To complement other govt Yojanas like Make In India, Start up India, Digital India etc.
- To launch training centres in rural areas to fight against unemployment and poverty.
