This is in continuation to the posts consolidated here and a subsequent one here.
In the case of human-engagement intensive and quality-based interventions (or thick activities), the conventional wisdom in development revolving around evidence-based policy/program formulation and their planned implementation generally fails when the rubber hits the road. Instead, they require starting with some basic version of a program (a minimum viable product), then iterating intensely during implementation, and opportunistically building elements on the MVP that increase the likelihood of success.
Apprenticeship promotion programs are a good example. The Business Standard has an article on India’s apprentice programs.
Apprentice programs have been a constant part of skill development and job creation initiatives of the central and state governments for several decades. In recent times, there have been the National Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme (NAPS) and the National Apprenticeship Training Scheme (NATS). The news article has this assessment from a recent NITI Aayog report on the country’s apprenticeship ecosystem;
India’s apprenticeship ecosystem remains fragmented and uneven. In 2024-25, while 1.31 million candidates registered for apprenticeship, only 985,000 were engaged and barely 251,000 completed their training — exposing significant leakages between enrolment, engagement, and completion… Medium and large enterprises constitute fewer than 30 per cent of active establishments but account for over 70 per cent of apprenticeship engagement… Weak linkages between educational institutions and industry further undermine programme effectiveness… Women account for only 18.2 per cent of the apprentice pool.
It makes these suggestions
The report recommends establishing a consolidated national-apprenticeship mission, which would serve as an umbrella framework for all apprenticeship initiatives. It envisions a single-window digital interface called the national apprenticeship portal, which integrates information on diverse apprenticeship programmes and provides streamlined access through one common platform. It recommends creating an apprenticeship-engagement index to benchmark state performance, standardising evaluation and assessment protocols, and empowering district skill committees as local anchors. To widen participation, it proposes introducing an apprenticeship-linked incentive scheme that provides financial incentives to both employers and apprentices, particularly targeting aspirational districts, the Northeast, and women apprentices.
For industry, it suggests cluster-based consortia of micro, small, and medium enterprises, a startup apprenticeship programme, and expansion into gig and sunrise sectors such as electric mobility, green energy, and digital services. Targeted incentives for aspirational districts and women apprentices, alongside post-training support and social-security coverage, can be critical for improving retention and completion.
It finally suggests that if effectively implemented, these reforms can ensure the successful adoption of apprenticeships in the country. I’m not sure.
This is a good example of an intervention where inputs and processes built on even the most rigorous evidence base, and meticulous and prescriptive implementation planning cannot ensure success. It is also an illustrative example of how the discrete logistical approaches crowd out more organic engagement.
The NITI Aayog report proposes several elements of logistics - an umbrella framework, a single-window portal, an index to benchmark performance of states, standardisation of evaluation protocols, creation of district skill committees, apprenticeship-linked incentives to both apprentices and employers, targeting of women and backward areas, etc.
These elements give the form of a successful intervention, without actually ensuring desired outcomes. While such logistics elements are essential ingredients, they are not sufficient in the case of thick interventions that require behaviour and culture changes and where the quality of engagement is critical.
Worse, the overlay of well-intentioned, tightly prescriptive planning erodes local discretion and flexibility, and straitjackets the implementation. By crowding out the most critical ingredient for their success, local ownership and adaptive refinement, the program struggles.
So what could be done? For a start, we must acknowledge that such interventions cannot be one-size-fits-all nationwide programs. Second, the standard method of detailed prescriptive guidelines that revolves around implementation logistics cannot ensure effective implementation. Third, we must eschew the obsession with headline numbers and massive scale from the get-go. Such initiatives can at best scale gradually. Finally, this would require a single-minded focus on outcomes that involve changing habits and practices on the supply and demand sides. Apprenticeships should become attractive to both students and employers.
All these are hard by themselves and more so for paradigms defined around national programs. One approach could be to start in a few places by identifying firms that are already hiring apprentices or have an interest in doing so (how do we elicit this?), and engaging actively with them to declog the supply side of apprentices and ease their program access. It would also be required to work with the supply side, including educational and training institutions, to encourage and make apprenticeships attractive and desirable. This would generate a few illustrative examples of successes that can then act as lighthouses for emulation and scaling. Besides, it would also give insights about what works and does not.
Further, these are high-human-engagement intensive activities, whose success would depend critically on internal champions. Bureaucratic processes and practices alone will struggle to achieve the desired outcomes. They can only be complements to the main task of local engagement and struggles, driven by internal champions.
Other such examples of interventions would include those aimed at improving student learning outcomes, improving public health and sanitation, increasing the adoption of vocational education, the adoption of public-private partnerships in social sectors (education, health, community assets, etc.), etc.
Unlike programs that deliver specific inputs with defined processes and have a clear theory of change, these examples require behavioural and cultural shifts. No amount of top-down logistics-based inputs and processes can be a substitute for the hard grind of the bottom-up systemic engagement and collective struggles required to shift behaviours and cultures.
The logistics/procedure recipe in all these cases is mostly well-known. But there’s a never-ending search for ideas and innovations that can add to the recipe. Instead, the objective should be to bring them all together in a manner that ensures success. This is generally about implementation with a basic design, continuous iteratation, and opportunistic refinement of the design.
In this context, it is appropriate to conclude from an earlier post that, like other walks of life, implementation is all that matters.
The fundamental insight is that it’s not ideas that lead to development but their implementation, and that implementation is almost always far more daunting than the process of discovery of the idea itself. In fact, only a fraction of the pipeline of ideas ever finds its way into successful implementation… The most valuable individual and collective attributes for progress and development may be the desire and skills to tinker and embody (or institutionalise) to solve problems. In development in particular, they are far more important than the ability to ideate and innovate. Persistence and not mutation is what drives development (and much else in life)… It’s therefore apposite that development embraces and elevates the attributes, skills, and values of problem-solving through the process of tinkering, embodying, iterating, and scaling, instead of the current fetish with new ideas and innovation.
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