Project today reported that the Confederation of Indian Industry of the Southern Region is preparing plans for development of 16 districts including 4 in Kerala Thiruvananthapuram, Thrissur, Palakkad and Kannur. The project is part of a CII initiative under its India@75 national vision.

CII is setting up a task force to take forward the key recommendations of Vision Q1 document of Kerala with the theme of Advance & Create Together in alignment with Professor CK Prahalad's National Vision on India@75.

CII's vision documents released for Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry have chalked out strategies for the long term agenda for the prosperity of southern States. CII will train 25,000 school dropouts in work skills and modular employable skills. It has already adopted 42 ITIs in the Southern Region in 2007-08 for upgradation through PPP scheme another 50 ITIs will be adopted by 2008-09.

CII is also training 5,000 faculty members on soft skills through industry university consortium across the region and strives to introduce soft skills as choice based credit system in 20 universities in the region. It provides skills training to 10,000 socially disadvantaged students under affirmative action.