Enabling Job Creation

The launch of the Centre of Logistics Training for Excellence (COLTE) is a welcome initiative, but Nagaland must resist the temptation to measure success by the number of people trained or certificates issued. In a state struggling with persistent youth unemployment, the only meaningful measure of a skill-development programme is whether it leads to sustainable employment, higher incomes and greater economic participation. Established through a partnership between the Logistics Sector Skill Council (LSC), the Redington Foundation and the state government, COLTE promises industry-oriented training, national certification and employment linkages. Its stated targets-360 trainees annually, a minimum 75 per cent placement rate and a three-year operational commitment-are ambitious. The proposed international placement partnership between LSC and Zipaworld Innovation could also open employment opportunities beyond the state. More than 71,000 people are reportedly registered as unemployed with employment exchanges, while the real figure is likely considerably higher because many jobless youth are outside the formal registration system. Even more revealing is the finding that 92 per cent of registered unemployed lack formal technical or vocational training. This exposes the central contradiction confronting Nagaland: education has expanded, but employability has not kept pace. The answer cannot simply be another round of training. What Nagaland needs is a fundamental shift from a certificate-oriented skilling culture to an employment-oriented one. Training must begin with a question that is too often asked last: Where are the jobs? Nagaland sits at an important geographical junction connecting the Northeast with wider Indian markets and neighbouring countries. Its agricultural and horticultural products-including king chilli, kiwi and coffee-along with bamboo and other commodities, require increasingly sophisticated systems of transportation, warehousing, inventory management, packaging, freight handling and last-mile delivery. Yet much of this economic activity has not translated into corresponding opportunities for local youth in skilled and technical positions. COLTE can help change that equation, but only if its curriculum remains closely tied to actual industry requirements and evolving technologies. Training should not prepare young people for jobs that exist only on paper but for occupations that employers are genuinely seeking to fill. The same test must apply to the broader skilling ecosystem. The Nagaland Skill and Entrepreneurship Development Mission (NSEDM) and partnerships in construction, healthcare, hospitality, information technology and renewable energy point in the right direction. The growth of MSMEs under the Raising and Accelerating MSME Performance (RAMP) programme is equally encouraging, suggesting that entrepreneurship can gradually broaden Nagaland’s employment base beyond the government. The government should introduce transparent, independently verifiable tracking of every major skill programme and whether the trainees had started various enterprises. There is also a larger policy danger. If Nagaland becomes efficient at training young people only to export them to metropolitan cities and other states, skill development could unintentionally become another engine of migration. Working outside Nagaland is a legitimate aspiration, but the state must simultaneously build an economy capable of retaining talent. That requires investment, reliable infrastructure, access to finance, stronger local enterprises, better market linkages and a private sector capable of absorbing skilled workers. The government must also address the deep-rooted preference for government employment. That aspiration will not disappear through lectures about entrepreneurship. It will diminish only when private employment and enterprise offer competitive incomes, dignity, security and genuine career progression. COLTE, therefore, should not be celebrated merely as another training centre. It should be judged as a test of whether Nagaland can finally connect skills with markets, markets with investment and investment with jobs.