Free training gives leg up for BPL youth

Meenakshi Mali may look like any other ambitious youngster out to carve a place for herself in corporate India.

But the serene face hides the apprehension, curiosity, anxiety and excitement that is rumbling in the mind of this girl from Tara, a hamlet of 150 families near the Mumbai-Goa highway.

“I feel like Arjuna from Mahabharata,” she says. Like Arjuna who focused on nothing but the bird’s eye, which was his target during an archery session with Guru Dronacharya, Mali says her mind is focused on getting a job, and gradually dragging her family out of poverty.

Its presently very tough, she says, for her family of five, including parents and two younger siblings to survive on an annual household income of Rs13,000 ---an amount which people living just 50 kms away in Mumbai would spend on a night out.
However, lady luck seems to be shining on Mali.

Just after her TYBCom exams, she got to know from a local MLA that a project was underway in Panvel, about 16 km from her home, which would train youngsters like her from the below poverty line (BPL) category for free and help them get jobs.

This information was like manna from heaven for Mali, who has seen kids from her village struggle real hard to get jobs. Now after attending the 12-14 day training programme which taught her basics about the telecom industry, apart from grooming, communications skills, she is ready to get recruited in a telecom company in the front line category.

“I’m confident that I can speak in front of people without stammering. Above all my family is very happy.”

Mali’s training centre classmate Samir Patil’s family was also living a hand to mouth existence on an annual income of Rs15,000. Despite being a BA (economics) and having done a computer course (MSCIT), Patil, also from Tara village, was finding it a Herculean task to get a job, as he didn’t have good communication and presentation skills.

“The course is a boon for me and my friends at the centre from other neighbouring villages like Palaspe, Kudave, Awra,” says Patil.

Like them, opportunity is waiting in the wings for thousands of other youngsters from the BPL category living in rural areas, to get trained and get jobs. The union ministry of rural development, sales training academy NIS Sparta and Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) have together embarked on a proposal since April to train XII pass people from rural families having an annual income of less than Rs20,000 under the Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana.

The training, which is for domains like retail, telecom, etc. stretches for approximately 120 hours spanning 12-14 days in centres in 15 states and would incorporate basic domain knowledge, personal grooming, soft skills, communication skills to prepare candidates for jobs in operations, customer care, sales, etc wherein they can get average monthly salaries of Rs5,000-6,000, other than a certificate on completion given jointly by NIS Sparta and IGNOU.

Goutom Roy, executive senior vice president, NIS Sparta, says it was in early 2009, that the company approached the government with a proposal to train 48,000 people in 15 states. “Our aim is to train 7.5 million youngsters by 2022. Over 1100 candidates are currently undergoing training and 300 have already been placed.

Awareness about the programme would be created at district, block, and panchayat levels” In three years time, the project aims at training 100,000 candidates a year.

Rajesh AR, vice president, TeamLease Services, a Bangalore based staffing firm which is helping in placing the candidates says the programme would help candidates get into the mainstream labour force and acquaint them with the office environment.

If youngsters from the hinterlands get the kind of training that will fetch them jobs, it will help to a large extent in lessening abject poverty that is a common sight in several parts of Maharashtra and India, says Archana Joshi, project director, district rural development authority, Raigarh District.

“Several youngsters are educated to certain level, but as their skill sets don’t match the employer’s requirement, they remain unemployed. A tool which can tackle this problem is the need of the hour,” says Joshi.

The project, for which about 75 per cent of the funding is coming from the central government, started by approaching the district collectors, then the zilla parishad CEO, later the block development officer at the taluka level, and finally the gram sevaks who will get candidates who match the criteria and brief them about the project. “After selecting candidates, training starts at a centre. Initially, some students didn’t even know how to make a phone call. Post training they’ve gained in confidence ,” says Jagannath Dulge, a trainer at the Panvel and Palghar centres in Raigarh and Thane districts respectively.

However, to ensure that the daily 6-8 hours of load shedding does not play scrooge, Dulge says that instead of using LCDs, manual charts are used during the training.