• Union minister Rajeev Chandrashekhar said the government will set up India’s first Centre of Excellence in online gaming in Shillong by March this year.

• The ministry of electronics and information technology had recently circulated draft amendments to the IT Rules, 2021, with regard to online gaming for public consultation.

• The Centre of Excellence is expected to catalyse startups and entrepreneurs from the entire northeast region to build the next-generation online gaming ecosystem.

• Digital India Startup Hub through the Software Technology Parks of India will set up the Centre of Excellence in Online Gaming in Shillong.

• The minister also said that the central government is relaunching ‘Skill India’ under the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY 4.0) with an objective to train around 50,000 youths in Meghalaya in future-ready skills with industry-backed job opportunities.

• As far as other states in the region are concerned, the ministry of skill development & Entrepreneurship has set a target to train nearly 60,000 youths in Tripura and 35,000 in Nagaland across a spectrum of approved courses.

Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana

• The first version of Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) scheme was launched in 2015 to encourage and promote skill development in the country by providing free short duration skill training and incentivising this by providing monetary rewards to youth for skill certification.

• During its pilot phase, around 19.85 lakh candidates were trained across the country.

• The overall idea was to boost employability of youth corresponding to the industrial demand.

• After the successful implementation of PMKVY (2015-16) and learnings from the past, PMKVY 2.0 (2016-20) was launched with an outlay of Rs 12,000 crore by scaling up sectors, geographies and by greater alignment with other missions/programmes of government of India such as ‘Make in India’, ‘Digital India’ and ‘Swachh Bharat Mission’. 

• PMKVY 2.0 provided a larger role to the state governments by introducing Centrally Sponsored State Managed (CSSM) known as the state component under the scheme. 

• Placement-linked short term training programme was also introduced along with training of trainers and Aadhaar based attendance system.

• Based on the learnings of PMKVY 2.0 and to reorient the scheme to be in sync with the present scenario of policy changes and changing priority in different sectors, it was decided to speed up the implementation of PMKVY 3.0.

• Under Skill India Mission, the ministry launched the third phase of Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY 3.0) on January 15, 2021 to train eight lakh people across the country with an outlay of Rs 948.90 crore.

• Under the scheme, the District Skill Committee (DSC) is the focal point for its implementation. DSC shall have a major role in preparation of district level plan, mobilisation and counselling of candidates, formation of training batches, monitoring of quality assurance & post training support.

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