National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM)

Swarnajayanti Grameen Swarojgar Yojana (SGSY), one of the flagship programs of the RD Ministry with the focus on self-employment by reaching out to Self Help Groups, launched in the year 1999 is being restructured as the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM), to be implemented in a mission mode across the country. The restructuring comes in the backdrop of the fact that out of the estimated 7 crore rural BPL households, 4.5 Crore households still need to be organized into SHGs. The mission aims to reach out to all the rural poor families (BPL families) and link them to sustainable livelihoods opportunities. It will nurture them till they come out of poverty and enjoy a decent quality of life.

*NRLM Mission : To reduce poverty by enabling the poor households to access gainful self-employment and skilled wage employment opportunities resulting in appreciable improvement in their livelihoods on a sustainable basis, through building strong and sustainable grassroots institutions of the poor.”

* Approach

NRLM works on three pillars

*Enhancing and expanding existing livelihoods options of the poor

*Building skills for the job market outside; and

*Nurturing self-employed and entrepreneurs.

Livelihood services include financial and capital services, production and productivity enhancement services that include technology, knowledge, skills and inputs, market linkages etc. The interested rural BPL youth would be offered skill development after counselling and matching the aptitude with the job requirements, and placed in jobs that are remunerative.  Self-employed and entrepreneurial oriented poor would be provided skills and financial linkages and nurtured to establish and grow with micro-enterprises for products and services in demand. These platforms also offer space for convergence and partnerships with a variety of stakeholders, by building an enabling environment for poor to access their rights and entitlements, public services and innovations.
NRLM has set out with an agenda to reach out, mobilize and support 7 Crore BPL households across 600 districts, 6000 blocks, 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats, in 6 lakh villages in the country into their self-managed SHGs and their federal institutions and livelihoods collectives. NRLM’s long-term dedicated sensitive support would be with them and extend facilitation support in all their efforts to get out of poverty. In addition, the poor would be facilitated to achieve increased access to their rights, entitlements and public services, diversified risk and better social indicators of empowerment.