As per news reports in December 2020, the placement-linked skill development programme for rural youth launched in September 2014 under the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) DeenDayalUpadhyayaGrameenKaushalyaYojana (DDU-GKY) has helped 6.27 lakh (58 per cent) out of 10.78 lakh trained youth to get employment. While 4.50 lakh trained under the programme are yet to get a placement. The programme aims to train and get placement for 28,82,677 rural youth by March 2022.
The objectives of the scheme are to diversify the sources of the incomes of rural poor families and fulfill the career related aspirations of rural youth. So, the scheme focuses on poor rural youth between the ages of 15 and 35 years and provides for a mandatory coverage of socially disadvantaged groups, SC/ST (50 per cent), minorities (15 per cent), and women (33 per cent). The funding pattern of the scheme is 60 : 40 between centre and states respectively. It has 1,738 training centres across the country.
As a part of the skill India campaign, the scheme supports social and economic programmes like Make in India, Digital India, Smart cities and Startup India, and Stand-UP India campaigns.
In states like Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Odisha, and the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, 70 per cent trained youth have got placement. Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Sikkim have reported less than 30 per cent of trained youth getting placements. In Kerala, Maharashtra, Haryana, and Karnataka, more than 50 per cent of youth trained under the programme got placement.
Skill development programmes like DDU-GKY are quite significant in our country where over 180 million or 69 per cent of the youth between the age group of 18 and 34 years live in rural areas and about 55 million of them have no or marginal employment.