Budget 2022 |DESH stack for skilling good move but scalability through private partnership key: Experts

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her Budget speech on February 1 announced the launch of DESH stack e-portal for skilling online, a move aimed at making youth employment-ready.

Since the coronavirus outbreak, skilling has been one of the key focus areas for the government, as the demand for technology services has gone up exponentially.

“A Digital Ecosystem for Skilling and Livelihood—the DESH-Stack eportal—will be launched. This aims to empower citizens to skill, reskill or upskill through online training,” Sitharaman told the Lok Sabha as she presented the Union Budget for the year 2022-23.

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“It will also provide API-based trusted skill credentials, payment and discovery layers to find relevant jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities.”

The move has been hailed by the industry but they called for greater collaboration for the move to yield results.

“The government’s decision to launch Digital DESH e-portal for the skilling, reskilling and upskilling of the youth is definitely a great incentive keeping in mind the importance of upskilling and reskilling in the present scenario,” Krishna Kumar, Founder and CEO, Simplilearn, said in a statement.

Rituparna Chakraborty, co-founder and executive vice president, Teamlease Services, said connecting employability to employment was the crux of assisting youth to access a dignified livelihood. The Desh stack had the promise to achieve this goal for our youth.

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However, it was important to launch it as a collaborative PPP initiative, with various stakeholders, both in the skilling and employment space, to “ensure the platform is scalable and has the robust infrastructure as well as content and connectivity to benefit the youth”.

“It should allow seamless integration between academia, youth, industry, aggravators as well other government portals like NCS," Chakraborty said.

Over the last two years, the government has also been focusing on several initiatives to ensure employment and skilling. AtmaNirbhar Skilled Employees Employer Mapping (ASEEM), launched in July 2020 by Skill India, uses AI and machine learning to match the demand and supply gap in the market.

It connects candidates with hyperlocal jobs, and estimates current and future demand for employers. The portal has 1.38 crore candidates registered as of December 31, 2021.

To train more people in the latest technologies, the National Apprenticeship Training Scheme (NATS) has been extended previously for the next five years with an outlay of Rs 3,054 crore, which will make around 9 lakh students employable through apprenticeship.

The idea behind NATS is to train more people in the latest technologies such as AI and drones.