One guy had the vision, he was late C.K Prahlad ( bottom of Pyramid concept pioneer), in his speeches he talked about “I would like to see 500 million skilled technicians by 2022” ,the year India celebrates her 75th birthday. Nice Idea, nice gift .

Sadly, we took not just the idea but also the visionary number. 500 million sounds like a cool number good to quote and write about.Manmohan Singh the erudite Prime minister loved it. It was an aspirational target, not thinking what will these 500 million people do, is local employment demand for it, will people move out to demand areas . At almost half way from 2010 to this 2022 vision, we have clear answers.

The 500 million target was broken as below amongst  20+ ministries and the NSDC.

All this was good NSDC followed with skill gap surveys targeting areas of need but within the wrong framework provided. No one questioned this basic figure and here we were all wrong. NSDC was to be setup as a PPP but industry did not put in any money. The govt put in 99% of the money and made it unique model

Some who try to put the 2+2 argue using people entering the work force logic which actually points to the other way. It is normally quoted ad nauseum that 12 million people enter work force every year, this is primafacie is incorrect, economists say it is not ~6 million people.With population rates dropping to 1.4 this figure goes further down. At best even if we were to assume 12 million people the target would be 12*12=144 million people not 500 million. Worst case: The target cannot be more than 250 million people. 

The target needs to be halved. Lets face it, that’s what India needs and lets do it with quality.