Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana: NRLM

Introduction:

National Rural Livelihoods Mission is a poverty alleviation program launched in 2011 to promote self-employment and organization of rural poor. The core principle in the scheme is to organize the poor into self-help groups and make them capable of self-employment.
The programme aims at mobilising all rural poor women into self-managed community institutions such as self-help groups, village organisations, cluster level federations, producer groups/companies, in a phased manner.
In November 2015, the program was renamed Deendayal Antayodaya Yojana (DAY-NRLM).

Background of the program:

The Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY) was launched by the Ministry of Rural Development in the year 1999. The SGSY aimed at providing sustainable income to rural BPL households through income generating assets/economic activities in order to bring them out of poverty.
To examine various aspects of the scheme implementation, Ministry of Rural Development constituted a Committee on Credit Related Issues under SGSY (under the Chairmanship of Prof. Radhakrishna). The Committee recommended adoption of a ‘Livelihoods Approach’ to rural poverty elimination.

The approach encompassed the following four inter-related tasks:

Mobilizing poor households into functionally effective SHGs and their federations.
Enhancing access to bank credit and financial, technical and marketing services.
Building capacities and skills for gainful and sustainable livelihoods development.
Converging various schemes for efficient delivery of social and economic support services to poor households.
The government accepted the recommendation of the Committee and restructured SGSY into National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) in FY 2010-11 to provide a sharper and greater focus as well as momentum for poverty reduction.

DAY-NRLM:

The scheme is focused on promoting self-employment and organization of rural poor.
The Mission aims at creating efficient and effective institutional platforms of the rural poor, enabling them to increase household income through sustainable livelihood enhancements and improved access to financial service.

Main features of the scheme:

The scheme was launched through investment support by the World Bank.
The programme has a special focus on women empowerment including a dedicated component for promoting farm and non-farm based livelihoods for women farmers in rural areas.
The program organizes one woman member from each household into affinity based women SHGs and federations at village level and at higher levels.
NRLM supports the financial inclusion of the SHG members from rural poor households through bank linkage and also works with the Banking sector to ensure credit flow to the SHGs.
The financial support under the programme is mainly in the form of Revolving Fund and Community Investment Funds, given as grants to the Self Help Groups (SHGs) and their federations.
The Government is implementing DAY-NRLM across the country in all States and Union Territories (except Delhi and Chandigarh).

Target:

NRLM set a target to cover 7 Crore rural poor households through self-managed Self Help Groups (SHGs) and federated institutions and support them for livelihoods collectives in a period of 8-10 years.
DAY-NRLM ensures adequate coverage of vulnerable sections of the society such that 50 percent of the beneficiaries are members of the SCs & STs, 15 percent from minority groups and 3 percent from persons with disability, while keeping in view the overall target of 100 percent coverage of the rural poor households identified through Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) and through participatory processes of identification of poor households and approved by Gram Sabha.

Mission mode approach:

NRLM implementation is in a Mission Mode. This enables:

Shift from the present allocation based strategy to a demand-driven strategy enabling the states to formulate their own livelihoods-based poverty reduction action plans,
Focus on targets, outcomes and time bound delivery,
The continuous capacity building, imparting requisite skills and creating linkages with livelihoods opportunities for the poor, including those emerging in the organized sector, and
Monitoring against targets of poverty outcomes.

As NRLM follows a demand-driven strategy, the States have the flexibility to develop their livelihoods-based perspective plans and annual action plans for poverty reduction. The overall plans would be within the allocation for the state based on inter-se poverty ratios.

Sub schemes under DAY-NLM:

Some of the schemes launched under DAY-NLM are:

Aajeevika Grameen Express Yojana.
Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme.
Deen Dayal Upadhyay –Grameen Kaushalya Yojana.
Mahila Kisan Sahshaktikaran Pariyojana.

Aajeevika Grameen Express Yojana:

Aajeevika Grameen Express Yojana (AGEY)” is a sub scheme under Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana – National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM).
The scheme was launched by Ministry of Rural Development.
The sub-scheme was implemented in 250 blocks in the country on a pilot basis for a period of 3 years from 2017-18 to 2019-20.

The main objectives of AGEY are:

To provide an alternative source of livelihoods to members of SHGs under DAY-NRLM by facilitating them to operate public transport services in backward rural areas, as identified by the states;
To provide safe, affordable and community monitored rural transport services to connect remote villages with key services and amenities (including access to markets, education and health) for the overall economic development of the area by making use of the supports available within the framework of DAY-NRLM.

Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Program:

The Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme (SVEP) is being implemented as a sub-scheme under National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) to promote start-up enterprises in rural areas.The SVEP proposes to address following three major problems of rural start-ups:

A missing knowledge eco-system.
A missing incubation eco-system.
A missing financial eco-system.

SVEP will hence be a focused intervention to promote start-up entrepreneurship at village level by rural poor households by providing assured availability of need based financial support, capacity building and advisory services for establishment of village enterprises.
SVEP envisages the creation of sustainable self-employment opportunities for a large number of rural poor youth, enabling them to engage effectively with the market and help generate wealth locally. In the process, SVEP will bring banks and financial institutions closer to the village entrepreneur.

Deen Dayal Upadhyay –Grameen Kaushalya Yojana (DDU-GKY):

A major component under DAY-NRLM relates to skilling of rural poor youth for self-employment and wage employment. Towards this end the Ministry is implementing the Deen Dayal Upadhyay –Grameen Kaushalya Yojana (DDU-GKY) under DAY-NRLM.
DDU-GKY is a placement Linked Skill Development scheme which seeks to build the Skills of the poor rural youth and place them in relatively higher wage employment sectors of the economy.
DAY-NRLM also provides support for establishing Rural Self Employment Training Institutes(RSETIs) in each district of the country in collaboration with the Banks and the State Governments to provide training to the rural youth from the poor households to take-up economic activities.

Mahila Kisan Sahshaktikaran Pariyojana:

Mahila Kisan Sahshaktikaran Pariyojana (MKSP), is a sub scheme under DAY-NRLM. The Scheme is also implemented by Ministry of Rural devlopment.The aim of the scheme is to promote agriculture based livelihoods of rural women by strengthening community institutions of poor women farmers to promote sustainable agriculture. MKSP focuses on agriculture, non-timber forest produce and livestock interventions.

It provides three kind of services to the farmers, namely:

Extension services.
Training capacity building and handholding services.
Facilitation for convergence with other line department to access the benefit from other schemes/ programmes.

SARAS Aajeevika Mela:

In addition, the Ministry has been organizing SARAS fairs at Delhi as a part of India International Trade Fair (IITF) and also as ShishirMela in DilliHaat.
The SARAS AajeevikaMela 2018 in New Delhi is an endeavour of DAY-NRLM to provide to the rural women producers a national platform and an opportunity to showcase their products, and seek buyers, either individuals or bulk buyers for sale nationally / internationally.