India: National Policy on Skill Development 2009
The National Policy on Skill Development has the ambitious goal of training 500 million people by 2022. This includes increasing the number of apprentices from 258,000 in 2009 to 1 million in 2012, while ensuring that at least 30 per cent of opportunities benefit women by the same year. The principal objectives of the National Policy are to improve the relevance and quality of skills training, make programmes more demand-driven and responsive to the needs of the labour market, and increase access for those disadvantaged in the labour market such as youth, women and other identified minority groups.