The 5th National Conference of Chief Secretaries will be held in November 2025 under the chairship of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
As per the Economic Times, the theme for this year’s meeting will be “Human Capital for Viksit Bharat,” with a focus on building and leveraging human capital to achieve national goals. In order to achieve said targets, the conference will formulate action plans for education, skilling, and research and development (R&D), among other things.
The 4th conference had been held under the idea of “Promoting Entrepreneurship, Employment and Skilling: Leveraging the Demographic dividend.”
The conference will make sure that India’s manpower is trained and equipped to realise the dream of “Viksit Bharat,” especially with fast-paced technology scale-up and research and development progress within other countries.
One of the key plans to be discussed in the 5th meeting will be “Schooling: Building Blocks,” which will focus on basic education to outcome-based education, quality upgrades, and key areas of improvement. All states will take into account the current status and scenario of education in their respective areas to identify the challenges they face and create solution pathways and time-bound plans, taking a “life cycle” approach to education.
In order to achieve these goals, the education ministry will work alongside the ministries of skill development and entrepreneurship, women and child development, and youth affairs and sports.
Already, working groups dedicated to this venture have been established, with work underway to boost skilling and make it a mainstream part of the school and higher education curriculum. States are also being encouraged to adhere to the National Credit Framework.
The Centre has also taken multiple steps to improve the “ease of doing R&D” within India, keeping in mind global and strategic technological shifts. Fast-paced research development across international laboratories in areas like semiconductors, chips and defence technology remains a point of contention as the R&D in India is moving at a speed and scale that is lower than desired.
As the overseer of the National Conference of Chief Secretaries, Niti Aayog has been revising the rules for scientific institutions to improve the pace of R&D within India.