While the Indian economy has seen major boom in the last few years and sky-rocketing salaries lead to an altogether new lifestyle, you also see a large section of the Indian society being left out of this progress. Increasingly the policy planners, industry, academia are feeling that they can afford to ignore the education and training needs of such a huge population at their own peril. The year 2008 saw unprecedented state of terror and the thinking that is gaining ground is that an untrained and unemployed population is fodder for these acts of violence.

Realising the seriousness of situation, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, home minister (earlier finance minister) P Chidambaram, have taken up skill development as a priority area at the highest level. The budget has also made provision for major investments in training infrastructure. Taking cue, industry bodies CII, FICCI and others have started major initiatives and a large number of corporates have joined the movement.

In these pages, month after month, we will endeavour to bring to you developments in this sector.

	Agenda		In Focus		News and Reports		Corporate Perspective
	Role Model		Column		Experiences		Point Counterpoint
	Ergo		Soft Corner		Case Study