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Social Infrastructure and Employment 361

10.37 e-PGPathshala : 154 Universities have come on board for accepting credit transfer for
courses offered through SWAYAM platform till now, thereby boosting mainstreaming of Massive
Online Open Courses (MOOCs). In this regard, the e-PGPathshala has been offered as an Online
Gateway of Post Graduate Courses; 778 papers, with 23000 plus e-modules in 67 Subjects have
been developed, out of which 23 subjects cover the entire syllabus/curriculum. Due to COVID-19
induced lockdown and restrictions, ePGPathshala website has been used widely across all
Universities and several Universities have used ePGPathshala content as a flip class room.

10.38 Unnat Bharat Abhiyan has been launched to cater the rural local needs by leveraging
higher education. The objective of the scheme is to engage reputed higher educational institutions
(central and state; public and private) to understand and work in rural areas. As of now 2897
institutions are participating and they have adopted close to 14500 villages.

10.39 Scholarships for weaker sections: To address the issue of access to higher education
by students from weaker sections, scholarship schemes (such as Central Sector Scheme of
Scholarship for College and University Students which has benefited over 1.5 lakh students in
2021-22 as of November, Special Scholarship Scheme for J&K which has benefited close to
15000 students in 2021-22 as of November) have been operationalised.

SKILL DEVELOPMENT

10.40 To unlock the demographic dividend, several steps have been taken to increase the
skill levels in population. Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2019-20 shows that formal
vocational / technical training among youth (age 15-29 years) and working population (age
15-59 years) have improved in 2019-20 over 2018-19. The improvement in skills has also been
for males and females, both in rural and urban sectors. However, formal training for males and
females is lower in rural than in urban areas (Table 4).
Table 4: Distribution of Persons received formal vocational/technical training (in percent)

Age group Rural Urban All India

Male Female Total Male Female Total Male Female Total

2017-18
15-29 years 2.0 1.3 1.7 4.6 4.2 4.4 2.8 2.2 2.5

15-59 years 1.5 0.9 1.2 4.0 3.3 3.7 2.3 1.7 2.0

2018-19
15-29 years 2.4 1.5 2.0 4.8 4.6 4.7 3.2 2.5 2.8

15-59 years 1.8 1.1 1.5 4.9 3.9 4.4 2.8 2.0 2.4

2019-20

15-29 years 3.1 2.7 2.9 7.0 6.5 6.8 4.3 3.8 4.1

15-59 years 2.2 1.7 2.0 6.3 5.4 5.8 3.5 2.9 3.2
Source: Annual PLFS Reports, 2017-18 to 2019-20