Skilling alone cannot produce social mobility without credit and market linkage. Evaluate the role of the national finance and development corporations for SCs, OBCs and Safai Karamcharis.

Training gives a person a skill. Moving up socially also needs a job or the capital to start a business. Under PM-DAKSH (2020-21), three corporations funded the training and could also lend to trainees: NSFDC for SCs, NBCFDC for OBC/EBC/DNT and NSKFDC for Safai Karamcharis [1]. This made them a link between training and a livelihood. That link worked partly, but not fully.

Strengths: how they linked skills to credit and markets

• Credit linkage: The corporations offer concessional loans, help with project preparation and handholding for trainees who want to be self-employed [1][2].
• Market linkage: Institutes must place at least 70% of trainees or lose the third instalment (30% of training cost). Payment is tied to results [3].
• Targeting: There is no income ceiling for SC, DNT and Safai Karamchari candidates, because their disadvantage is social and not only economic [4].
• Outcomes: 96,162 of 1,87,305 trainees placed (about 51%) [1]. This is better than PMKVY short-term training, where CAG found about 41% of certified candidates placed [5][6]. The evaluation also found gains in confidence and social recognition, especially among women [1].

Weaknesses

• Placement short of the norm: 51% is well below the 70% rule [1][3].
• Data that cannot be checked: The same institutes report the placements they are paid for. In PMKVY, CAG found fake placement documents and bank details missing in 94.53% of records [5].
• Course choice: PM-DAKSH job roles came from the common SIDH list. CAG found these roles were chosen without skill-gap analysis [1][5].
• Merger risk: PM-DAKSH was subsumed into PMKVY (MSDE) from 2024-25 [1]. MSDE does not run these corporations, so the link between training and loans may weaken.

Verdict The corporations helped turn training into livelihoods better than skilling-only schemes did. But they were held back by placement data nobody verified and by courses not matched to local demand.

Combining credit, placement-linked payment and social targeting gives them a real but partial role in social mobility. To keep it after the merger:

• PMKVY centres should formally refer trainees to the three corporations.
• Results should be reported separately for each social group.
• The final instalment should be paid only after wages show up in a bank account.

This would advance the Article 46 directive to promote the economic interests of weaker sections, and SDG 8.