Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana (DDU-GKY)
The Government of India has set an ambitious target for providing skill training to 500 million of its youth by 2022, which is in line with the estimated demand for skilled manpower over the next decade. At the same time, many industrialized nations are facing an ageing population problem. Some of these countries are expected to face a cumula
tive shortage of 57 million workers by 2020. These numbers represent a historic opportunity for India to transform its demographic surplus into a demographic dividend. Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana (DDU-GKY), the skill training and placement program of the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) and Kerala State (Kudumbashree) occupies a unique position amongst other skill training programmes, due to its focus on the rural poor youth and its emphasis on sustainable employment through the prominence and incentives given to post-placement tracking, retention and career progression. Even as India moves towards becoming an international skills hub, there is a need to acknowledge the challenges preventing the rural poor from taking advantage of this momentous economic transition. Lack of formal education, marketable skills and other constraints imposed by poverty place significant entry barriers to today's job market. DDU-GKY is therefore designed to not only provide high quality skill training opportunities to the rural poor, but also to establish a larger ecosystem that supports trained candidates secure a better future.
