Over the past few years, the Governmentof India (GOI) has been implementing five large nationalskills development (SD) programs to improve the employmentand earnings prospects of urban and rural youth. Thecritical questions to be addressed are: what have been theemployment outcomes of those programs?; what earningspremium do one give to trainees?; do program benefitsjustify the significant public investments made into them?;what organizational aspects affect delivery and reach?; andfinally, based on these findings, what should be the courseof action? This paper tries to address these questions,using data from a set of surveys of trainees (past andcurrent), non-trainees (comparison group), employers, andtraining providers. The quantitative analysis has beencomplemented by a qualitative study based on interviews andfocus group discussions, with focus on business processes,program management, and monitoring and evaluation (M and E).Five states have been taken into consideration for thisanalysis: Assam, Andhra Pradesh (AP), Madhya Pradesh (MP),Odisha, and Rajasthan. This paper comprises severalsections. The first section provides introduction. Sectiontwo presents skills development programs; section threepresents employment outcomes of SD programs; section fourpresents wage and earnings effects of SD programs; sectionfive is cost-effectiveness of SD programs; section six isIndia versus international experience; section sevenpresents findings from the qualitative study; and sectioneight gives conclusions and policy recommendations.
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