Baramulla Only Jammu Kashmir District Covered Under NAVYA Scheme Targeting 3,850 Adolescent Girls Nationwide | Kashmir Life

SRINAGAR: Jammu and Kashmir features marginally in the Centre’s newly launched NAVYA vocational training initiative, with Baramulla being the only district from the Union Territory selected under the scheme aimed at skilling adolescent girls in aspirational regions, Parliament was informed on Monday.

The NAVYA programme, short for Nurturing Aspirations through Vocational Training for Young Adolescent Girls, was launched in June 2025 as a joint initiative of the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and the Ministry of Women and Child Development. It targets girls aged 16 to 18 years in aspirational districts, with a national training target of just 3,850 beneficiaries spread across 27 districts in 19 states.

For Jammu and Kashmir, the inclusion is limited to Baramulla district, underscoring the narrow geographic footprint of the scheme in a Union Territory that has large pockets of socio-economic vulnerability and a sizeable adolescent female population. No data was shared on the number of girls to be trained specifically in Baramulla or on timelines for rollout, leaving the local impact unclear.

According to the government’s reply, the NAVYA initiative focuses on demand-driven vocational training aligned with both traditional and non-traditional sectors. The curriculum includes emerging job roles such as digital marketing, cybersecurity, AI-enabled services and green jobs, along with modules on life skills, health, nutrition, hygiene, financial literacy and legal awareness. The stated objective is to bridge the gap between education and livelihood for girls in underserved and remote areas.

While the Centre projects the programme as a step towards gender-inclusive skilling, the limited scale raises questions about its reach. With only 3,850 adolescent girls expected to benefit nationwide, the average intake per district works out to little over 140 trainees, a figure that appears modest given the scale of the challenge the scheme claims to address.

The parliamentary reply also detailed a parallel green skills initiative centred on electric vehicle technologies, being implemented by the Directorate General of Training in collaboration with Shell India under its corporate social responsibility programme. This EV-focused training is restricted to 10 to 12 institutions across five states and Delhi, with no institute from Jammu and Kashmir included in the pilot phase.

Under this programme, short-term EV and green skills courses of 50 to 240 hours are being offered to existing students and trainers in select ITIs and National Skill Training Institutes, alongside longer NSQF-compliant courses such as Mechanic Electric Vehicle and Green Hydrogen Production Technician.