Haryana budget 2023-24: ₹250-crore push for skill upgrade to tackle joblessness among youth
Khattar govt plans to skill two lakh unemployed youth through specific courses and training, while promising to undertake recruitment of at least 65,000 regular posts in coming fiscal
Admitting explicitly that providing employment opportunities is a challenge, Haryana chief minister (CM) Manohar Lal Khattar on Thursday proposed a slew of “skilling for employment” steps to address the rising unemployment that is turning the youth restive and becoming a major poll plank ahead of Lok Sabha and assembly polls in 2024.
In his 2023-24 budget proposals, chief minister Khattar, who also holds the finance portfolio, has set aside ₹250 crore to skill two lakh unemployed youth through specific courses and training in next fiscal while promising to undertake recruitment of “at least 65,000 regular posts in 2023-24” including through the common eligibility tests for Group-C and Group-D posts.
At least 10 single-engine trainer aircraft and one multi-engine aircraft for Haryana Institute of Civil Aviation will be purchased in order to expand employment opportunities in the civil aviation sector and to provide training to aspiring pilots, while a fire services training centre in Jind district will be set up to meet the increasing training needs of service personnel for an established, modern and trained fire services in the state.
The focus of the budget, however, is on skill training in modern industry-related job roles and emerging technologies even as youth will be trained to take up jobs as caregivers for the aged and infirm.
“We face many challenges…including providing entrepreneurship and employment opportunities to youth who constitute the backbone of the state,” said Khattar while referring to his fourth budget, 2023-24, as the first budget of Amrit Kaal, the term Union government has coined for 25 years in the run-up to India’s 100th year of Independence in 2047.
Among the steps proposed to skill youth are a centre for skilling for emerging technologies, to be set up in Shri Vishwakarma Skill University, where 5,000 youths will be trained every year for jobs in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, data science etc, skill schools set up in spare infrastructure of government schools, skill education from Classes 6 to 8 from 2023-24 academic session.
The focus of the budget is on youth empowerment and entrepreneurship by bringing a “new emphasis on skilling for employment” through the Haryana skill development mission.
A Venture Capital fund will be set up to provide financial support to women start-up entrepreneurs who come from families with annual income ₹1.80 lakh. This fund will have a corpus of ₹200 crore and the details of the scheme will be notified later.
As the onus of skilling youth will be on Shri Vishwakarma Skill University (SVSU), the skill schools to be set up using spare infrastructure of government schools etc will be affiliated to SVSU. The SVSU will specify the skill training and existing faculty of these institutions will be trained by the SVSU.
Short-term foreign language training will also be provided to youth exploring job opportunities abroad and the government will bear the expenses of the foreign language certification test of youth hailing from families with ₹6 lakh annual income.
And to encourage girl students to join ITIs, the government has proposed to provide a financial assistance of ₹2,500 to every girl (from families with ₹3 lakh annual income) who takes admission in government ITI.
Under Mukhyamantri Antodya Parivar Utthan Yojana that helps in increasing family income to minimum ₹1.80 lakh per annum through self-employment, 36,993 families were sanctioned loans through Antyodaya melas in this financial year. In 2023-24, the target is to cover at least two lakh families in this income group and provide them access to funding from banks for which ₹2,000 crore will be set aside in consultation with banks.
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