NLRM A fresh lease of life for the rural people living BPL

The Ministry of Rural Development has decided to re-design and re-structure the on going Swarnjayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana (SGSY) into National Livelihood Mission (NRLM). The idea has been conceived as a cornerstone of national poverty reduction strategy.

The objective of the Mission is to reduce poverty among rural BPL by promoting diversified and gainful self-employment and wage employment opportunities which would lead to an appreciable increase in income on sustainable basis. In the long run, it will ensure broad based inclusive growth and reduce disparities by spreading out the benefits from the islands of growth across the regions, sectors and communities

The Rural Livelihoods Mission is proposed to have a three-tier interdependent structure. At the apex of the structure will be the National Rural Livelihoods Mission, under the Ministry of Rural Development, Govt. Of India. At the State level, there will be an umbrella organization under the State Department of Rural Development/ Department which is responsible for implementing self-employment/rural livelihoods promotion programs. The State level Mission with dedicated professionals and domain experts under the State department of Rural Department will be guided financially, technically and supported by the NRLM on need basis. The National and the State Mission will have a symbiotic relationship. They will have mutual access to the knowledge and services in the area of rural livelihoods.

The NRLM will be set up in the Rural Development Ministry under the overall supervision of Joint Secretary in-charge of existing SGSY Division. It is proposed to have a Governing Council (GC) and an Executive Committee (EC). A GC will be constituted under the chairmanship of the Minister for Rural Development, GOI. The Minister and Secretary of Agriculture, Women and Child Development , Labour , State Minister of Rural Development ( 4 on rotation basis), Adviser (RD), Planning, Land Resources(LR), Panchayati Raj Institutions(PRI), Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation(DW&S), Tribal Affair Commission, DG Indian Council Of Agriculture Research (ICAR), CMD NABARD, Financial Service, DG National Institute Of Rural Development (NIRD) and DG (CAPART), Representative of Self Help Group (SHG) Federation, (3) Experts (RD)/ NGO’s (5) will be the member of the Governing Council of the Mission while Secretary (RD) will be the Convener and the Mission Director (JS) will be the Co-Convener of GC.

The Governing Council will be the policy making body setting overall vision and direction to the Mission, consistent with the national objectives. It will lay down priorities and review overall progress and development of the Mission. The GC will be empowered to lay down and amend operational guidelines. However, the subsidy norms of the NRLM as approved by the Government shall in no circumstances be changed or exceeded for any of the Mission components. It will meet at least twice a year.

The NRLM has been envisaged to perform the following functions:

(i) facilitate establishment of state level umbrella agencies by the state governments for providing institutional support for poverty elimination programs; (ii) support state level umbrella organizations in the design and implementation of pro-poor programs;(iii) provide professional and technical support an guidance to the state agencies by seeking out and disseminating pro-poor technologies and institutional innovations through research and development and forging linkages between the state agencies and the national centers of excellence; (iv) liaise with other Missions/departments to explore areas for convergent action and facilitate such convergence to enhance the capabilities and facilitate access to other entitlements such as wage employment, food security, education, health, etc and ; (v) explore and facilitate partnerships between National/State Rural Livelihood Missions and public, private, NGO and Co-operative sector partners, for diversifying and sustaining the livelihoods of the poor; (vi) undertake/commission studies to assess emerging self employment/skill based employment opportunities and disseminate the information to the State agencies; (vii) study best practices in self-employment/ micro enterprise activities across the country and support their replication in other parts of the country through workshops, cross-learning visits and exchange programs; (viii) develop capacity building and training modules for functionaries of the peoples institutions as well as the state agencies and district units, and other stakeholders participating in the poverty elimination programs; (ix) facilitate analysis and dissemination of the impact of changing economic policies on the poor and play policy advocacy role; (x) act as information warehouse on rural poverty statistics by accessing information from multiple sources; (xi) identify shortcomings in program design and implementation and facilitate debates/discussions thereof by experts for finding innovative & workable solutions and their dissemination to the state agencies. (xii) promote institution of comprehensive monitoring and learning systems at the state agencies and district units, including web enabled MIS and community monitoring systems; and (xiii) identify high quality institutions in livelihoods education and training and facilitate linkage of the state organizations with missions with such institutions for capacity building of professionals.

The need for restructuring the SGSY has arisen on account of feedback provided and recommendations made by various studies including those conducted by National Institute of Rural Development (NIRD), Hyderabad, Bankers Institute of Rural Development (BIRD), Lucknow, Centre for Management Development, Thiruvananthapuram etc. and reports of the Steering Committee constituted by the Planning Commission for the 11th Plan Further, the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD), Government of India (GoI) has accepted the recommendation of the Committee on Credit Related Issues under SGSY (Prof.Radhakrishna Committee) to create a National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) to provide greater focus and momentum for poverty reduction to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) by 2015 through rapid increase in the coverage of rural poor households under self-employment.

In addition to provide self employment to the rural folks, the Mission will also help in enhancing their capabilities and facilitate access to other entitlements such as wage employment and food security and benefits of Indira Awas Yojana (IAY), drinking water, land improvement, education, and health and risk mitigation through convergence and coordination mechanism. The decision follows three major developments that have taken place in the recent years and had major impact on the rural economy especially the rural poor i.e (i) the economy experienced a robust growth (ii) National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) emerged as a major program to provide additional income to the rural poor and (iii) various initiatives taken under the National Skill Development Mission (NSDM).Taking these developments into account and in order to achieve the objective of the 11th Plan of broad based inclusive growth in this perspective, the strategy paper of Ministry envisages a four pronged strategy to attack rural poverty comprising (i) generation of self employment in credit linked micro enterprises and salaried employment through demand driven skill development (ii) wage employment under National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (iii) payment of pension to elderly and vulnerable sections under National Social Assistance Program (iv) income generation and social security programs of other Ministries of Government of India.

NRLM programs is proposed to be implemented in all rural districts of different states excluding the districts in Delhi and Chandigarh. However, the Governing Council of the Mission based on the latest available data is empowered to include or exclude the districts for the implementation of various components of the Mission.

It is envisaged that the State Governments will transit into the NRLM mode only in a phased manner. Till such time the States do not transit into NRLM mode, the SGSY activities will continue to be implemented as per current guidelines/norms and fund releases will be made to DRDAs as per existing procedures. The revised norms of SGSY will be applicable to the States having the commitment to fulfill the following within the stipulated time period:

i. State level agencies and the district level units are set up

ii. Full complement of professional staff has been trained and placed

iii. State level poverty reduction strategy has been formulated

Funds for implementing the Mission’s programs are proposed to be directly released separately to the state level agency and the DRDAs on the basis of the detailed district wise annual action plans submitted by the state agencies and approved by the EC of the National Mission, but within the overall allocation indicated for each state on the basis of the poverty ratio. The funds to state level agencies will be transferred to meet expenditure on: (i) establishing and running the dedicated state /district/sub-district level agency; (ii) organizing state level skill development and placement services (covering more than one district); and (iii) other activities such as technical services, concurrent evaluation and such other activities.

The funds to DRDAs will be transferred to the meet expenditures on: (i) subsidy to SHGs; (ii) infrastructure and marketing (district level and sub-district level); (iii) corpus for federations; (iv) interest subsidy; (v) training and capacity building of all stakeholders and (vi) engagement of NGO facilitators. The funds to district units will be released where full complement of professional staff has been placed and district poverty reduction plans have been formulated. In other case the exiting procedure of fund release will be followed.

Funds will be released in two installments based on the progress report and submission of utilization certificates by the district units under intimation to the state level agency. The State level agency will compile and consolidate expenditure details, physical progress and other details and submit to National Mission periodically. MoRD will release 75% of the approved amount to the State Government/DRDA and the State government will release the balance amount of 25%. In respect of north-eastern states, J&K, Himachal Pradesh & Uttrakhand, the GOI and state share will be in the proportion of 90:10, respectively.

As far as possible, e-banking will be used for transfer of funds to the state level agencies and to the districts. The state level agency will maintain a separate budget and prescribed accounting system for the Mission activities both at the state and district level. The district units will adhere to the accounting system and financial guidelines prescribed by the state agencies. The block units will be directed by the district units to follow similar systems and guidelines to ensure transparency and accountability.

The National Livelihood Mission will have a strong mechanism of Monitoring and Evaluation with the involvement of the state level agency and dedicated district level units. The Monitoring and Learning (M&L) specialists at the Mission and state agency levels will coordinate concurrent monitoring of the Mission activities.

At the district level, the Monitoring and Learning specialist will undertake monitoring of the physical and financial targets of various Mission interventions, adopting the formats designed by the National Mission for this purpose. In addition, the district level M&L specialist will be responsible for instituting community monitoring systems including a system of self monitoring by the SHGs and their federations.

Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) will be actively involved in the following activities of the Mission:

(i) identification and mobilization of BPL households into SHGs, with priority being given to the SC and ST households especially primitive tribal groups, poorest of the poor households, women headed households and households engaged in declining occupations;(ii) facilitating federation of SHGs at the village/gram panchay at level/ block level and providing basic facilities for the effective functioning of such federations in terms of providing accommodation for federation office and such other basic facilities;(iii) giving priority to the demands of the SHGs and their federations in the annual plans/activities of the PRIs by making suitable financial allocations;(iv) entrusting execution of panchayat activities including civil works to SHGs and their federations on a priority basis; (v) leasing out panchayat resources such as fishing ponds/tanks, common property resources, market yards, buildings and other properties to the SHGs and their federations for proper management and maintenance;(vi) entrusting responsibility for collection of panchayat revenues including house property tax to the SHGs for a small fee; and(vii) entrusting management and maintenance of select civic amenities to the SHGs.(viii) any other activity which could be taken up by the members of the SHGs or their federations.

NRLM will have multi pronged approach to strengthen livelihoods of the rural poor by promoting SHGs, improving existing occupations, providing skill development & placement and other activities thereof.. The training and capacity building, deployment of multidisciplinary experts and other initiatives will enhance the credit worthiness of the rural poor.

The services of craft persons, community resource persons etc will be utilized as TOT to for capacity building and training under NRLM. The periodic interaction of Mission with Public Sector Banks and other financial institutions to enhance the reach of rural poor to the un-banked areas will ensure their financial inclusion. Further, poor have multiple livelihoods and they need multi pronged approach to strengthen it.

The existing strategy of social mobilization of poor, their organization into SHGs, training & capacity building, credit linkage for micro enterprise for self employment will continued to be one of the main components of NRLM. Emphasis will be on convergence with various schemes of Rural Development along with other line departments/ministries to strengthen the exiting occupations of the rural poor, ensure their participation as beneficiary of emerging opportunities as a result of various schemes for sustainable livelihood and also introducing newer technologies in their enterprises.

The multidisciplinary domain experts at various levels will coordinate with all the stakeholders for benefiting the poor in risk mitigation, food security, training and capacity building, micro financing, infrastructure development and better marketing linkages for getting appropriate prices for their products. People owned & people centered organization by federating SHGs will act as facilitators for strengthening the SHGs and thereby benefiting the rural poor.

In addition skill development & placement will be the subset of the redesigned program for deploying the rural BPL poor in the sun-rising sectors of the economy. The Mission will make concerted efforts to train rural BPL to provide last tier implementation personnel as service providers, lok sevaks, etc to local bodies to implement to programs efficiently and effectively.(EOM)