Skill Development: We will formulate a 'National Policy for Reskilling and Upskilling' to evolve a flexible and industry-responsive workforce which is capable of accessing new opportunities and to insulate it from technological shocks.

The 2019 Sankalp Patra's skill development commitment is a promise about design rather than volume: "We will formulate a 'National Policy for Reskilling and Upskilling' to evolve a flexible and industry-responsive workforce which is capable of accessing new opportunities and to insulate it from technological shocks."

Two words carry the test — industry-responsive, and policy. Responsiveness means training people for shortages that exist; policy means writing down how, so it does not depend on year-to-year improvisation.

The CAG's performance audit of the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana, tabled on 18 December 2025, is the audited record of the flagship instrument through which this was to happen. It found neither.

On the plan: "For PMKVY implementation, there was an absence of micro-level skill-gap information, long-term implementation strategy, and National Skill Development Plan." The audit's first recommendation asks the ministry to expedite the National Skill Development Plan "and adopting a long-term strategic plan to provide direction and continuity to its skilling efforts" — which is, in substance, what the manifesto had promised to write.

On responsiveness: "sectoral, and State-wise trainings under PMKVY were not in line with skill-gap studies." Even the studies that did exist were not driving what was taught. And the second structural requirement of a responsive system — that the various skilling programmes talk to one another — had not been met: "Even after completion of three phases of PMKVY, convergence between efforts of different Central Ministries and between Central and State Departments was not effective."

The consequence shows up in outcomes. Of the candidates certified under the two largest components — short-term training and special projects — "out of the total candidates certified under STT/SP components of PMKVY (i.e. 56.14 lakh), 23.18 lakh candidates (i.e. 41 per cent) were placed." And that figure carries its own doubt: in Kerala, "incorrect placement documents were produced by Training Partners as proof of placement of candidates."

It also shows in who was trained. Candidates "were enrolled by ignoring their age, education, work experience related specific criteria prescribed in the guidelines/qualification packs", and there was no mechanism to verify that enrollees were the "unemployed youth and school/college dropouts" the scheme was designed for. A programme that cannot confirm it is training the intended people, for the identified shortages, is not industry-responsive in any sense the manifesto sentence would recognise.

The scale was not the problem. Across three phases, ₹9,261 crore was spent of a ₹14,449 crore outlay and 1.10 crore candidates were certified against a target of 1.32 crore. The ministry has since changed the design — from the fourth phase, Aadhaar-based e-KYC at enrolment and a year of post-certification tracking through the Skill India Digital Hub — but those changes fall outside the audited period and after this promise's term.

The promise was to write a reskilling and upskilling policy that made the workforce industry-responsive. The audit covering the same years records no such plan, and training not matched to the gaps. Our verdict is not supported.