The national apprenticeship promotion scheme or NAPS was put into effect since the 19th of August, 2016 under the patronage of the Indian Government with a primary aim to augment the number of trained and expert apprentices in various industries of the country. This supposed boom in the number of skilled and competent apprentices would help in the smooth functioning of industrial operations and also result in increased productivity. All of these can be reflected in the improved financial bottom line of the companies as well as the financial growth of the nation.
Industrial sectors that will be directly benefited from the introduction of the NAPS program :
The NAPS program was initiated by the Ministry of Skill Development of India in synergy with the Central Government with lofty expectations. It was noticed that earlier the scope of the engagement of apprentices was largely restricted to the manufacturing and production industry. But the larger vision of the program, infused with industry-related recommendations prompted some critical reforms which were enacted subsequently.
Amongst these reforms, one of the most important is the explicit extension of the apprentices in the service industry as well. Since more jobs are being created in the service sector currently, there are tremendous opportunities to involve and employ a large number of apprentices in the IT-ITeS, Tourism, and Hospitality, BFSI, Retail, Media and Entertainment, Beauty and Healthcare and so on.
The scenario of the Indian IT industry :
The Information Technology and Information Technology enabled Services (IT-ITeS) comprises of that section of the Indian industrial sector which is undergoing tremendous improvement at a rapid pace and is contributing to the change of the Indian business standards. The IT-ITeS sector comprises of :
- Software development
- Consultancies
- Software management
- Provision of miscellaneous online services
- Business Process Outsourcing
During the 1990s, the IT industry in India kick-started with an annual export of around 100 million dollars and employed around 5000 employees. The present market reports are astonishing as the Indian IT industry is a global giant with annual IT exports ranging around 70 billion dollars and employing around 28 million employees. In 2017, it was found that this sector contributes to at least 7.7% of the GDP of the nation.
Benefits of the Indian IT industry due to the introduction of NAPS:
The NAPS scheme has shifted the traditional cumulative focus from ITI-related education and training and has opted for a more comprehensive curriculum which can be adopted for technical and technological graduate degree and diploma programs. It has also promulgated that the private and public sector undertakings with relevant infrastructure can employ at least 2.5% to 10% of candidates who have undergone the required apprenticeship trainings to develop their skills. The reimbursement provided to these apprentices from the Central Government would keep the companies’ expenditures at a bare minimum while simultaneously boosting their output.
Thus the NAPS program has the capacity to positively influence the IT industry of India by :
- Introducing a large number of dextrous and youth workforce into the core operations of the IT companies
- Increasing the number of young IT and Computer engineers and honing their industry-specific skills so that they can be an asset to their organisation
- Offering the companies to thrive by virtue of their increased productivity and curtailment of additional costs by terminating the employment of unskilled workforce and employing skilled youths learned in the intricacies of the trade
- Offering a nice climate favourable for the proliferation of IT companies and startups which would facilitate from the boom in the number of employable individuals
- Paying the skilled professionals with adequate salaries which would subsequently result in the economic growth of the country if they save portions of their income and invest those in banks and other financial organisations.
Thus it is imperative that the emergence of a large number of competent and young individuals , either engineers or IT-service related stuff or technicians, through the successful implementation of NAPS would result in the further growth of the Indian IT industry.
