(The Asian Age)
The NDA government’s ambitious Skill India scheme, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi had started in 2015 with the aim of providing short term training to one crore people, had to cut down its fund allocation to states by 20 per cent within three years of its implementation, owing to large amount of money going unspent and slow performance of states across the country.
Considering the fact that 17 out of the 29 states of the country are being directly or indirectly ruled by the BJP, the poor performance of states in a flagship scheme like Skill India which is the brainchild of the Prime Minister, comes a major embarrassment for the Centre. Under the centrally sponsored state managed (CSSM) component of Skill India scheme which is also known as Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), the Centre had allocated Rs 3,000 crore to all states for the period between 2016 and 2020 (as it is a four year scheme).
However after evaluation it was found that a lot of funds were going unspent and the overall progress by states was too slow. Subsequently the funds for states under the CSSM component had to be cut down by 20 per cent to `2,400 crore, highly placed sources said.
