Minorities, Hunar Haat And Atmanirbhar Bharat
Tanmaya is a budding journalist
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By Tanmaya Das
First publised on 2021-01-22 09:37:10
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Tanmaya is a budding journalist
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The 'Hunar Haat', a flagship initiative of the Ministry of Minority Affairs, is being held at Lucknow from January 22 to February 4 this year. It aims to strengthen employment opportunities for artisans and craftsmen. The prime focus of the program is to go 'vocal for local'. PM Narendra Modi endorses local products and praises new talents. However, such initiatives and skill development programs have not had much impact on job creation and employment opportunities amongst minorities.
Several schemes empowering artisans and craftsmen are woefully inadequate to provide job opportunities to the minorities. Skill India aims to empower 300 million people by 2022, but those trained under PMKVY are still unemployed. Unprecedented economic slowdown due to the pandemic has resulted in joblessness and the minorities are the worst sufferers.
Before the pandemic, around 1.6 million people benefitted from Skill India, but the employability rate also dropped from 50 per cent to 30 per cent. Such disastrous results are partly due to maladministration. The mismanagement in providing funds to minorities is a hindrance. Under PMKVY, the government claims that the trainees would gain proficiency to open their enterprises, but the lack of proper skills results in massive unemployment.
It must be noted that simply introducing skill development measures to achieve Aatma-nirbhar India will not help the minorities to grow independently. Job creation, business, fund-flow and employability run in parallel. Additionally, limited access to credit due to NPA affects investment in job creation. The loss in business due to the pandemic has resulted in heavy debt in many cases.
The government has claimed that the NEP 2020 will undeniably generate a profound effect on the economy to fight unemployment. Nevertheless, the implementation measures are exaggerated and not achieving the desired results.
The upcoming Union Budget must combat unemployment with suitable measures. The government must find ways to allocate funds for minority development and disburse them to the beneficiaries without hindrances. Improvisation in the training programs is needed along with the strict monitoring of use of funds in skill development centres.
