Union Budget 2012 :: Focus on Skills Development and Infrastructure
- Part 2 -

Gitchandra S Oinam *

Budget Expectations- check out what women want: As woman we have lot of expectations from life, (God has made us like that, capable of expecting & delivering), so why not add some more to our wish list. Like, as this is exam time, we expect a lot from our children, Appraisal time, so lot of expectations from boss, Anniversary time, so lot of expectation from husband and budget time so lot of expectations from Finance Minister, Bienu Vaghela, Chief Editor, Apnapaisa said.

We just celebrated International Women's Day on March 8, but the hangover still persists, particularly when the issue is of reaching out to Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, who is just few days away from presenting the Union. This Woman's day, as a woman I would request Finance Minister to consider slashing duties from branded cosmetics as it will motivate us to be well turned out in office.

It will in deed a pleasure if the duties are reduced to minimum on food and beverages so that healthy and cheap food is accessible to millions of Indian homes Budget. We as women love to dress our children, ourselves, so duty on apparel to be drastically reduced to make them more affordable. As they are really expensive which is a big dampener as it is eating badly into family's budget? The prices of apparel should be reasonable so that every home maker is happy to buy them, Ms Bienu Vaghela said.

Another big expectation and the most important one too, decent pricing for a decent home which will be possible only if duties from steel/ cement are slashed. Also declaring housing under Infrastructure may go a long way in making us realize our dream of owning home of our home. As a working professional, I would expect that Income Tax slab goes up from present Rs1.80 lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh, which will mean more cash in hand to provide better amenities.

Those who have home loan need some respite too, and that can be granted if standard deduction on home loans goes up from age old Rs1.5 lakh to Rs 3 lakh. It's not that we as women only love to splurge, we love to save too! Finance Minister would surely know that whenever a family faces financial crisis, women of the family comes forward to bail out the family. And they achieve this by the small amounts invested in many small saving instruments from their pin money.

It will be a great help if interest rates on small saving instruments are increased to ensure better returns. Not only this, this budget should lay thrust on long-term investment and the standard deduction of 80C may be raised to Rs 1.5 lakh. It is also proposed to increase the tax exemption on investments in infrastructure bonds under Section 80CCF from the current Rs 20,000. Hence, instead we home makers cutting our expenditures year after year, we will expect FM to cut expenditure and show much needed financial prudence, Ms Bienu Vaghela concluded.

Bangalulu Initiatives on Skills: Karnataka Small Scale Industries Association (KASSIA) will be made as a partner institute in the skill development scheme to provide financial assistance, Union Minister for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Virbhadra Singh said. There is a need to equip the youth with skills and knowledge for giving them access to productive development," Singh said. Unveiling a slew of initiatives taken by his Ministry for the development of MSME sector like public procurement policy for SMEs, which mandated 20% reservation for SMEs in all procurements by Government departments and PSUs in addition to a special quota of 4 % earmarked for SC/STs; target of training 1.5 crore persons within 2022 and more than 40 lakh persons during the 12th Five-Year Plan.

He said the ministry would give free training to SC/STs, women and physically challenged persons along with monthly stipend of Rs 500 per trainee; provision for 15 % capital subsidy on institutional loans upto Rs 1 crore availed by MSMEs under the Credit Linked Capital Subsidy Scheme (CLCSS); providing guarantee cover upto 85 % on collateral-free credit facility extended by lending institutions to new and existing SMEs for loans up to Rs 1 crore.

The KASSIA School of Business Management, started jointly with ICBMS Educational Trust and Info Career Pvt Ltd would offer Certificate, short-term and long-term courses on soft skills and other skills specifically required by prospective and existing entrepreneurs in multiple languages including English and Kannada and also incorporate e-learning practices.

KASSIA is coming up with several initiatives for the small scale industry, such as the launch of a dedicated B2B cum Employment Exchange portal called kassia.com by the end of this month. The website would aim at listing at least 5,000 small scale industrial units in the next one year.

The KASSIA Credit Cooperative Society would shortly expand its outreach and function as a micro finance organization. KASSIA had invested Rs 12-crore in the last 5 years towards infrastructure building and the setting up of a state-of-art world class Industrial Campus at KASSIA Udyog Bhavan. KASSIA had not availed of any funding from the Central Government for this purpose; Raikar said and requested the MSME Minister to release at least Rs 1 crore from the Ministry. He also appealed to the Minister to consider enhancing the limit under CLCSS Scheme to Rs 2 crore from Rs 1 crore and the subsidy limit from Rs 15 lakh to Rs 30 lakh.

Qualification Frameworks differences between two Ministries: The problem between the labour and HRD ministries is that both have developed their own vocational qualification frameworks. While the HRD ministry calls it the national vocational education qualification framework (NVEQF), the labour ministry calls it NVQF.

The HRD ministry, which is led by Kapil Sibal, has had several parleys with state education ministers, including one as recently as February 22, and industry bodies for its national qualifications system, which would cover all schools, vocational education and higher education institutions. It would set occupational competency standards that list out major activities and knowledge a worker must possess to perform a task, based on inputs of skills councils for different sectors.

There are a few other critical differences in approach. The HRD ministry's vocational courses impart a few hundred hours of training along with the student's regular classes. With the Right to Education law in place, the ministry is also constrained from including school dropouts in such courses. The labour ministry's institutes deliver courses that run into thousand hours or more but focus only on the skill sets relevant for a job. They allow school dropouts from even Class V to scale up their skill sets.

The two ministries also differ on creating equivalence between those who acquire skills from industrial training institutes and those who acquire it from HRD ministry-run formal schools, colleges and polytechnic institutes. While the HRD ministry wants to start vocational courses from Class IX with a training focus on the services sector, the labour ministry's focus is on both the services and manufacturing sectors.

As per the government's allocation of business rules, vocational education refers to such courses being offered in schools and polytechnic institutes, with the HRD ministry entrusted with the overall responsibility. Vocational training comes under labour ministry's watch and refers to courses offered by separate training institutes such as ITIs.

The labour ministry, led by Mallikarjun Kharge, controls the National Council of Vocational Training (NCVT) and runs over 10,000 industrial training institutes (ITIs) and 6,000 vocational training centres. Beside, seventeen different ministries are involved in imparting skills, but primarily in their own sectors. It has an agreement with the World Bank and a Euros 6.5 million pact with the European Commission (EC) for technical assistance to develop its vocational framework in India. The first meeting with EC officials took placed.

Concluded ....