TVET policies for ensuring effective skills development of marginalised youths in India
By Srabani Maitra
Pervasive socio-economic inequalities and escalating unemployment are two fundamental areas of concern in contemporary India. Presently, 394 million people in India suffer from vulnerable employment constituting more than a quarter of the global population of 1.4 billion people in such a category (ILO 2018). To redress employment related vulnerabilities, policy debates in India have focused on augmenting the skill training capabilities of the vocational education system in order to integrate vast sections of the marginalised youth populations into the labour market. Existing social inequalities of gender, caste, and class, however, continue to severely constrain the current TVET policies directed towards ensuring effective skill development in India. In this context, our interdisciplinary, mixed method research (funded by ESRC-IAA and SFC-GCRF), in collaboration with IIM Calcutta, focuses on a) examining pathways for ensuring social mobility, sustainable employment and poverty alleviation for marginalised youth populations through vocational education; b) understanding youth perspectives and engagements with policies and practices of skill training in India to address socio-economic barriers faced by them in the contemporary labour market; c) exploring policy solutions for greater inclusion of young women in formal vocational education and skill training to facilitate their access to the labour market in India.