Published Paper Details:

Abstract: India is on the threshold of a demographic dividend over the next 25 years, due to an increase in the proportion of young and working-age people in the population as a whole. Such a rise in the youth population is a window of opportunity as it reduces the ratio of dependents to total workers leading to higher rates of savings, investment, and growth. This change in the age structure, if properly utilized, will result in a demographic dividend, which provides immense growth opportunities to the nation. But only 50% of Indians were engaged in the labour force in 2018, and 81% of them worked in the informal sector, commonly referred to as the unorganised sectors or the shadow economy. The data provided by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) show that only 2.4% of the Indian workforce has undergone formal skill training and another 8.6% have received non-formal vocational training. This indicates that only a few young people who have vocational training will enter the labour market. Hence providing employable skills to young people remains an important challenge in capturing the opportunities of the demographic dividend. India faces the dual challenges of the inadequacy of a skilled workforce as well as non-employability of large sections of youth in lacking employable skills. Therefore this paper explored the initiations of Government of India (GOI) as well as Government of Karnataka (GOK) regarding enhancing employability skills through skill development programmes and policies in unorganized sector workers.