Skill Development: A Challenge for A Billion Plus Nation

Abstract

Conceived in this way, the early planners in India "regard idle or unproductive labour as on the one hand, a curse or a cause of poverty and low living levels and on the other, a potential resource for development" (Myrdal, 1977). Around 1960's Prof.P. C. Mahalanobis has noted that only about 13 million persons (out of a total labour force of 160 million) who worked under government and public authorities or in private organised large-scale enterprise, have employment of the type usual in the advanced counties.