(GIST OF YOJANA) Reimagining Entrepreneurial Skills

GIST OF YOJANA : Reimagining Entrepreneurial Skills

JULY-2025

Reimagining Entrepreneurial Skills

Context:

In 1982, the first Rural Development & Self Employment Training (RUDSETI) Institute was established. The adoption of this model of rural entrepreneurial skilling as the ‘Rural Self Employment Training Institutes’ (RSETIs) programme by the Government of India (GoI) in 2007-08. This remarkable journey of rural entrepreneurship with a motto of short-term courses (6 to 60 days) with long-term hand-holding (two years) has really sparked a great entrepreneurial movement in the country. This reflects in the establishment of over 600 RSETIS, so far across India.

Scope and Impact:

Entrepreneurship excellence begets economic growth, poverty alleviation, employment generation, innovation and inclusive development.
Entrepreneurs are being hailed as the architects of India’s transformation so, the performance of RSETIs with figures of training of 55.53 lakh rural youth in various subjects (domain + entrepreneurship) with a settlement rate of around 73 per cent (40.27 lakh) is really impressive.
The bank linkage has also been ensured for 20.40 lakh of these trained candidates to start/strengthen their enterprise. Furthermore, the beauty of this programme is that it aligns perfectly well with the Prime Minister’s call to the youth to become job creators rather than job seekers.
The youth who are supported to establish/strengthen the enterprises under the above programme not only become job providers to other youth, but they also contribute to the economic development of the rural areas.
The enterprise ecosystem has changed drastically in the 21st century with remarkable developments in technology, e.g., artificial intelligence, data analytics, online platforms including Government e-Marketplace (GeM) for marketing, etc. A number of other programmes of the GoI, e.g., the Entrepreneurship Skill Development Programme and the Prime Minister Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP) of the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME), have also explored new areas in entrepreneurship. Collaboration with such programmes can act as a multiplier for entrepreneurship.
Further, working on the principle of ‘leaving no one behind’, women from marginalised communities, differently abled individuals, tribals and ex-servicemen, etc., need to be made part of the growth journey.
Each group may need a different set of interventions, then the emerging set of enterprises in logistics, gig and platform-based work, home-based enterprises, etc., present a whole new set of challenges. India has got a remarkable demographic dividend also, which needs to be leveraged properly before it’s too late. Around eight million youth are entering the workforce every year in India.

Challenges:

There are a number of steps which may be taken to address these issues in skilling and leverage the demographic dividend.
First and foremost, there is a need to move from the conventional ‘top- down approach’ to the ‘bottom-up approach’ to address the needs of skilling in a comprehensive way.
The demand for skilling in different sectors needs to be compiled from the districts in a systematic and structured way.
Further, the targets need to be allocated as per this demand rather than distributing the targets uniformly to various States and UTs from the national unit.

Way forward:

The RSETIs need to move from old-fashioned physical ‘RSETI Bazars’ to online marketing platforms, as this is the future of marketing. The role of WhatsApp and Instagram has been phenomenal in the new-age marketing.
For this, structured interventions need to be made so that rural youth can leverage them properly. The key intervention areas here are the development of ‘Marketing Sakhis’, i.e., Community Resource Persons (CRPs) specifically trained in digital marketing, and the ‘Fulfilment Centres’ at the district level.

Conclusion:

These initiatives of restructured skilling will help in more employment opportunities for youth and women of the rural areas along with a boost to the rural entrepreneurship. In a nutshell, the time has now come to reimagine the rural entrepreneurial skilling initiative, as we need to address the rising aspirations of young India in line with the vision of the Prime Minister of making India a ‘Developed Nation’ by 2047. In this regard, large-scale skilling, along with appropriate mentoring, financing and marketing, has a great role to play.