The benefits of demographic divided cannot be reaped without providing skills to the large unskilled population. Discuss connecting skill development with skewed workforce.

Demographic Dividend occurs when the working age population is higher in a country driving economic growth. For India to reap the benefit of demographic dividend it needs to make 500 million youths employable by 2022.
a) According to official data, NSDC trained 557,000 people in 2016-17 under the flagship programme, Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana, but managed to place only 63,000. Thus many of the skilled are not getting employed. This has lead to growth of underemployment.
b) New employers are seeking employees with not only technical skills but a range of broad skills like softs skills, formal education.
c)Thus skill-building in India can be viewed as an instrument to improve effectiveness and contribution of labour to the overall production.Most of the skill building measures are focused on technical aspect of skilling.
d)For increasing the employ-ability among youth, it is necessary to enhance accessibility and affordability of formal education. Their soft skills also need t be aligned with job requirement.
e)The Government should  institute policies that provide appropriate education and vocational training in order to move people out of agriculture and make use of opportunities in the market economy as 48% of the labour force is employed in agriculture.
Gap between skilling and employ-ability would create underemployment and waste the demographic dividend. Thus skilling needs to be re-aligned with market needs.

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