“As India prepares for the 2026 Union Budget, the focus on skilling must move decisively from counting enrolments to measuring employment outcomes, retention, and long-term adaptability. NEP 2020 laid out a clear vision for integrating education, vocational pathways, and employability. The next phase of reform must therefore be about execution, ensuring that skilling investments translate into sustained workforce participation, especially for those furthest from opportunity.
This also requires deeper investment in research and documentation at a community level. Documentation through longitudinal studies, retention data, and post-placement outcomes is critical to designing skilling systems that respond to real-world constraints rather than assumptions.
As the economy transitions toward AI-enabled work, focus on skilling to keep up with electric mobility and green enterprises, skills can no longer be designed in isolation from industry demand. Initiatives such as the expansion of Atal Tinkering Labs, AI-focused Centres-of-Excellence (CoE), and school-to-college STEM pathways are important in democratising early access to quality science and technology education.
Budgetary support that aligns skilling programs with emerging sectors, strengthens digital public infrastructure for skills, and embeds vocational learning within the schooling-to-work continuum envisioned under NEP 2020 will be critical. For young women and underserved communities, especially, access to skills must also be accompanied by enabling conditions such as nutrition, social protection, credit access, and local market linkages, if learning is to convert into livelihoods.
The Budget also presents an opportunity to deepen public-private-NGO collaboration, particularly in implementing national missions on skilling, foundational learning, and workforce readiness at the last mile. Measuring success through retention, learning outcomes, and transitions into dignified work, rather than certification alone, will determine whether India’s demographic dividend becomes a driver of inclusive growth or a missed opportunity.”
