Training for BPL youth

There is a labour crunch in service oriented, labour intensive sectors such as retail, marketing construction, and primary healthcare. In a PPP (public private participation) arrangement with the rural development ministry, India’s biggest retailer, Future Group will train and place 32,000 below poverty line youth from rural areas in 19 states over the next 18 months. Even Aditya Birla, Hindustan Unilever, Reliance, Mc Donald’s and Adidas are some other companies that will be following suit soon.

The government has backed such initiatives with a special projects scheme under the Swarnjayanti Swarojgar Yojana relaunched recently as the National Rural Livelihood Mission under which it extends 75 per cent support to companies to build training infrastructure and placement facilities for rural youth.