(FREE) UPSC Current Affairs 2024 PDF

(GIST OF YOJANA) Initiatives for Rural Women

[March-2022]

Initiatives for Rural Women

Context:

Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana; National Rural Livelihoods Mission is a centrally sponsored programme that aims at eliminating rural poverty through promotion of multiple livelihoods for each rural poor household, is proving to be the game-changer.
Launched in 2011, DAY-NRLM aims to reach out to 9-10 crore rural poor households by 2023-24. The Mission provides long-term support to the community institutions and its members in such a way that they diversify their livelihoods improving their incomes and quality of life.

Key Principles:

The Mission believes that organising poor rural women into their institutions, supporting a basket of livelihood activities and facilitating access to credit can bring remarkable transformation in their lives.

The design of DAY-NRLM is based on the following key principles:

Poor have a strong desire to come out of poverty, and they have innate capabilities to do so. Social mobilisation and building strong institutions of the poor is critical for giving voice to the voiceless;
Long-term and continuous financial and livelihood support is required for the rural poor households to come out of poverty;
Capacity building and nurturing of the poor is most effective and sustainable when it is done by the poor themselves, and
Sustainable development of the poor requires promotion of multiple livelihoods- asset as well as skill-based livelihoods in farm as well as non-farm sectors.

Components: Key Principles

The Mission believes that organising poor rural women into their institutions, supporting a basket of livelihood activities and facilitating access to credit can bring remarkable transformation in their lives. The design of DAY-NRLM is based on the following key principles:

Poor have a strong desire to come out of poverty, and they have innate capabilities to do so. Social mobilisation and building strong institutions of the poor is critical for giving voice to the voiceless;
Long-term and continuous financial and livelihood support is required for the rural poor households to come out of poverty;
Capacity building and nurturing of the poor is most effective and sustainable when it is done by the poor themselves, and
Sustainable development of the poor requires promotion of multiple livelihoods- asset as well as skill-based livelihoods in farm as well as non-farm sectors.

Components:

Institution Building and Capacity Building:

Promotion of community institutions and their capacity building is one of the core components of DAY-NRLM.
The Mission aims to mobilise one woman member from each rural poor household into Self-Help Group (SHG). There are 10 to 15 members in each Group. These Groups are federated into Village Organizations (VOs) at the village level.
Further, 10 to 15 VOs are federated into Cluster Level Forum (CLF). These community institutions provide a collective platform for the rural poor to overcome poverty through access of financial, technical and marketing resources. These institutions require continuous and intensive capacity building and training.

Financial Inclusion:

DAY-NRLM facilitates universal access to the affordable, cost-effective, reliable financial services to the poor. It works on both demand and supply sides of financial inclusion by promoting financial literacy among the poor and providing catalytic capital to the SHGs and their federations on the demand side and coordinating with the financial sector and encouraging use of digital financial technologies, business correspondents and community facilitators on the supply side. Financial inclusion is primarily being facilitated by enabling SHGs to be linked to banks and to access all financial services including loans.
DAY-NRLM has also been instrumental in providing last mile delivery of financial services in remote rural areas where people do not have much access to Banking services. This is being facilitated through promotion of digital finance and deployment of SHG Women as Business Correspondent Sakhi with the support of Banks and Common Service Centres.

Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana (MKSP):

As part of the livelihood intervention, MKSP was initiated as a sub-component of DAY-NRLM in 2011. The primary objective of the MKSP is to empower women by making systematic investments to enhance their participation and productivity, as also create sustainable livelihoods of rural women. The programme is implemented in project mode. The key objectives of the sub-scheme are-

To enhance the productive participation of women in agriculture;
To create sustainable agricultural livelihood opportunities for women in agriculture,
To improve skills and capabilities of women in agriculture to support farm and non-farm-based activities;
To ensure food and nutrition security at the household and the community level;
To enable women to have better access to inputs and services of the government and other agencies; and
To enhance the managerial capacities of women in agriculture for better management of biodiversity.

Aajeevika Grameen Express Yojana (AGEY):

AGEY is a sus-scheme under DAY NRL provide safe, affordable and community monitored transport services to rural areas. The vehicles are owned and operated by members of SHG networks.
It connects remote villages with services and amenities including access to markets, education and health besides providing livelihood opportunities to SHG members. The Scheme was launched in the year 2017 and till December 2021, a total of 1811 vehicles were operational in 23 States.

E-Marketing:

Considering increasing footprints of e-marketing in the country, various steps are being taken to extend benefits of this to the SHG members. The Saras Collection covering an exclusive exquisitely handcrafted collection has been launched on Government e-Marketplace (GeM).
This unique initiative between GeM and NRLM showcases daily utility products made by rural SHGs and aims to provide SHGs in rural areas with market access to Government buyers.

Partnership/Convergence for Livelihood promotion

DAY-NRLM recognises that an enormous effort is required to extend the benefits to all the members of the SHGs.
Accordingly, it places a very high emphasis on convergence with other programmes of the Ministry of Rural Development and other Central Ministries, programmes of State Governments for developing synergies directly and through the institutions of the poor.

Conclusion:

In the 75th year of India’s Independence which is also being celebrated as ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’, India has taken a number of steps through DAYNRLM programme to empower women in die rural areas of the country. However, there are miles to go before we can rest.