Skill push: Centre to incentivise states, districts to partner industry for local skill planning; AI to map jobs and workers

The government plans to incentivise states and districts to work closely with industry to identify and address local skill gaps, adopting a hyper-local approach to build a future-ready workforce, a senior official told PTI on Monday.Addressing the CII Smart Manufacturing Summit 2025, Secretary in the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Debashree Mukherjee said the focus will be on district- and cluster-level planning aligned with investment patterns to ensure skill development keeps pace with industry needs.“The idea is hyper-local planning to try and ensure that skill gaps at the district-level and at the division level follow investments. We are going to incentivise districts and states to plan with industries to address local needs,” Mukherjee said.She explained that the approach will involve identifying specific industrial clusters, assessing their workforce requirements and tailoring skilling interventions accordingly. “Hyper-local planning to look at where are the clusters, where are our planning needs and how do we address those needs,” she added.Mukherjee also said the ministry is exploring the use of artificial intelligence to simplify regulatory processes and reduce compliance burdens for stakeholders.On the digital front, she noted that the Skill India Digital Hub (SIDH) and the National Career Service (NCS) portal have been integrated to improve job matching using AI tools.“We have the SIDH portal and labour has the NCS portal where a lot of industries are posting their job requirements. We have linked the NCS and the SIDH portals and we will in the next 15 days start sending out messages using AI to map job requirements with people who have the requisite training in the vicinity,” she said.The initiative is aimed at improving alignment between training programmes and actual industry demand, while enabling faster placement of skilled workers at the local level, officials said. The government believes such targeted coordination between states, districts and industry will be key to addressing emerging skill shortages as manufacturing and technology adoption accelerate.