NEW DELHI, Oct 15: The Delhi Skill and Entrepreneurship University will start the courses from the coming academic year. The university, one of a kind, aims at meeting the human resource requirements of the business world, working in close consultation with companies, which will be treated like “customers.” The courses will be designed as per the demands of the industry.

“The Delhi Skill and Entrepreneurship University has been established through an Act of the Delhi Legislative Assembly. I am glad to announce that the university has started functioning today. The first board meeting of this university was held today,” Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had said at an online press conference on Monday.

The new educational scheme envisions jobs for all those who pass out of the university. As the courses will tailored to suit the industry demands in consultation with them, students will be able to immediately take up an occupation by getting hands-on training at the companies.

Dr Neharika Vohra, head of the Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at IIM-Ahmedabad (in pic), has been appointed as the Vice-Chancellor. The board members include Pramath Raj Sinha, founding dean of the Indian School of Business and founder of the Ashoka University, Genpact founder Pramod Bhasin, Naukri.com founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani, entrepreneur Shrikant Sastri and IP University founder Vice-Chancellor KK Aggarwal.

India began looking for ways, in its characteristic style, to adequately skill the manpower about a decade ago when foreign experts drew the attention of the Government to unskilled labour being the root of underdevelopment and backwardness in the country. A glaring lack of quality in workforce has a telling effect on productivity and the overall quality of life, and that has been India's story so far which is now being sought to be reversed.

Kejriwal said he had interactions with businesses that did not have qualified people to work for them. "On the one hand, many young students are unemployed and on the other, industries are not able to find skilled and trained labour. If we impart skills to our children, the industries will give them jobs,” he argued.

COMMENT: 'Unskilled' manpower has been the curse of India's productivity and quality of life that bothered neither the Government nor the trade unions in the country for the past over seven decades - or did not have the ability to decipher. It has been an all-pervasive evil that is always taken for granted. Now, Delhi has launched a university for skill development. It will be tuned to the requirements of the industry, and the youth will get jobs instantly, and the industry will get skilled hands, claims Chief Minister Kejriwal!