Enabling rural poor
While North East cries out for skilling and employment opportunities, very few training providers pay heed to the region. B-Able is among the few organisations focusing on rural skills in the North East. Meha Mathur profiles this NSDC partner

While approving partnerships for skilling of 500 million Indians, the National Skills Development Corporation (NSDC) would certainly look at training providers who have proven track record in vocational and livelihood training, and who have a pan India presence. After all, given the numbers involved, scalability is crucial.

Basix Academy for Building Lifelong Employability (B-ABLE), a skills development institution under the umbrella of Basix, a leading microfinance and livelihood promotion company, with presence in 21 states of the country, is one such player which is partnering NSDC in this mission. Basix has a 10,000 strong team in 26,000 villages of the country, and has over three million stake holders. The holding company of Basix Group, Bharatiya Samruddhi Investments and Consulting Services Limited (BASICS Ltd), started operations in 1996, as country’s first “new generation livelihood promotion institution”. Under the Basix Umbrella also fall Basix Academy for Building Life-long Employability, the Livelihood School, Basix Academy for Livelihoods and Microfinance Practice and Basix Consulting and Training Services. Thus, the group as a whole is well-poised to lend its expertise to any skilling initiative on a pan-India level, and its new arm called B-ABLE also draws on the experiences and expertise in the training of these numerous initiatives.

In fact Sushil Ramola, MD and CEO of B-ABLE, says that the major factor that worked in B-ABLE’s favour when they presented the proposal to NSDC, was the credibility that Basix enjoys, and its footprint across the country. But equally important factor, he adds, was the quality of thinking that went into making the proposal.

The focus of B-ABLE is skill building at the bottom of the pyramid, especially in rural areas. Among the earliest partners of NSDC, it launched its operations with a model skill training campus at Dehradun. And now, new centres have been opened in Rajasthan, Bihar, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. On the whole, B-ABLE plans to set up 400 centres in 10 states to fulfil its training target of one million in 10 years. Ramola informs that in this endeavour, the parent company will provide support in terms of manpower and financing, but rather than using the existing physical infrastructure, B-ABLE will create new centres, even if in close proximity to the existing infrastructure.

North East is one region that B-ABLE is focusing on. It has recently signed an MoU with the State Institute of Capacity Building (SICB), Sikkim to setup 16 livelihood schools across the state. It’s also spreading to other seven sisters, including Meghalaya and Tripura with its training programmes. B-ABLE plans to impart training in agriculture and food processing in this region, as the region is conducive to growing certain fruits and vegetables, proper processing of which can yield rich economic returns. “The North East needs to be mainstreamed and needs to be provided opportunities,” says Ramola. This is why the company is braving militancy and inaccessibility to reach out. Ramola admits that ensuring trainers for the centres in the North East is tough, and therefore they are preparing a cadre of trainers from within the local community in the North East.

In fact, farm sector is one area that B-ABLE intends to focus on throughout the country, as that is the biggest employer in the country. Rural farm and non-farm trades are among the seven sectors that B-ABLE is targeting. The other sectors are:

1. Construction and allied trades
2. Healthcare services
3. Tourism hospitality and travel trade
4. Food processing
5. Banking insurance and finance
6. Automobile

The target audience of the courses being run is unorganised sector, as majority of the population falls in this category. As many as 600 persons have already passed the courses started by B-ABLE. However, as Ramola says, the systems are still being worked out, including the assessment method. As of now, B-ABLE is depending upon its own assessment method, even while it is working out assessment modalities with NSDC. It has a team of dedicated people to monitor training and evaluation. Equally importantly, B-ABLE has devised its own Train the Trainer programme to prepare a large team of trainers for its 400 planned centres.

With its basics in place, B-ABLE is all set to embark on its journey to enable one million Indians.

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