Sonia to launch rural livelihood mission
Congress relies on social agenda to reach ‘aam aadmi’
The Congress-led UPA Government is all set to re-launch its flagship rural self-employment scheme as a national mission to reach out to all the rural Below Poverty Line (BPL) families and link them to sustainable livelihood opportunities.
Congress president and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi will launch the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) at Banswara in Rajasthan on Saturday.
Rural Development Minister Vilas Rao Deshmukh said that the NRLM – the new version of the Swarnajayanti Grameen Swarojgar Yojana (SGSY) – would be implemented in a Mission Mode, marking a 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.
The NRLM will ensure at least one member from each identified rural poor household, preferably a woman, is brought under the Self Help Group network in a time-bound manner. The NRLM will ensure adequate coverage of vulnerable sections of the society, so that 50 per cent of the beneficiaries are from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, 15 per cent are minorities and three per cent are persons with disability, with the ultimate target of 100 per cent coverage of the BPL families.
The NRLM’s other significant feature would be focus on targets, outcomes and time-bound delivery. Deshmukh said that the Mission Mode would ensure continuous capacity building, imparting requisite skills and creating linkages with livelihood opportunities for the poor, including those emerging in the organised sector and monitoring against targets of poverty alleviation outcomes.
“The states have the flexibility to develop their livelihoods-based perspective plans and annual action plans for poverty reduction,” said Deshmukh. The overall plans would be within the allocation for the state based on inter-se poverty ratio. “The poor will drive the agenda, through participatory planning at grassroots level, implementation of their own plans, reviewing and generating further plans based on their experiences,” he added.
The SGSY was launched in 1999 to provide self-employment opportunities to rural poor through the Self-Help Groups. The government said the scheme was being restructured as out of the estimated seven crore BPL families, about 4.5 crore still needed to the organised into SHGs.
The restructuring of SGSY into NRLM to ensure universal social mobilisation seems to be well in line with the ruling Congress’ plan to rely on its “aam aadmi” agenda to sail through the turbulence the UPA-II has been experiencing over a series of scams —the mess in preparations for Commonwealth Games, irregularities involving the Adarsh Housing Society, the wrongdoings in 2G spectrum allocations and the inquiry of the Comptroller and Auditor General into the Indian Space Research Organisation’s contract with a private company. The Centre is also giving final touches to the National Food Security Bill after the National Advisory Council finalised the draft of the proposed legislation.
