Totally agree - life skills as well as practical skills should be part of mainstream education. The current system segregates - which gives the impression that academic knowledge is somehow superior to practical knowledge. India seems to be moving in the direction of greater integration, though the pace of change is not what some had hoped.

My current research focuses on skills training for agriculture in India. In some places, the quality of training is quite good, but it does tend to be overly theoretical - trainers are still finding ways to make them genuinely skills based with opportunities for practical learning (and that's not as easy as it sounds!).