Policy and Financing Framework for Livelihoods
25
Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and
Sector Skill Councils. National Commission
on Entrepreneurship has been set up to
“guide entrepreneurship movement in the
country, unleash entrepreneurship and
youth power in pursuit of wealth creation,
employment generation and productivity
improvement by judiciously harnessing
technology and resources”. The National
Skill Development Fund (NSDF) takes
care of funding requirements. Private and
public contributions to the fund are invited.
The corporate sector is also invited to fund
skill development initiatives out of their
CSR budget, either directly or through
the NSDF. All governments across various
sectors reserve a part of their budget for
skill development support, either directly
or through the NSDF. The end users are
also required to bear a part of the costs. A
guarantee fund mechanism has been set up
in the name of National Credit Guarantee
Trustee Company (NCGTC). This fund
guarantees loans for skilling and enterprise
development.
The Policy brings to one place all the
issues and actions related to skills and
enterprise development. It seems heavily
weighted towards skills development. Unless
enterprises come up, skilled people cannot
find employment. Beyond the National
Commission on Entrepreneurship, there
is no other concrete measure on enterprise
space. One of the major problems in enter-
prise creation is equity for start-ups and first
stage expansion post start-ups. Financing
for enterprises in the Policy documents is
all about loans. The proposal on “revisiting
bankruptcy rules and facilitating counselling
and advisory service to troubled firms” are
very critical and relevant for enterprises.
Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Antyodaya
Yojana
The central government announced the
Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Antyodaya Yojana
(DAY) in September 2014. The scheme pro-
poses to increase the livelihood opportunities
for the poor through skill development. The
new scheme covers all the 4,041 statutory
towns as compared to the previous scheme
that covered only 790 cities. An amount
of
`
10 billion was allocated for the urban
component of DAY during 2014–15. Out
of this,
`
5 billion was to be spent on skill
development of over 5,00,000 urban poor.
The urban component of the scheme focuses
on the following:
•
Imparting skills to individuals to make
them employable (at a cost of
`
15,000
to
`
18,000 per person);
•
Promotion of self-employment by set-
ting up individual microenterprises and
group enterprises with interest subsidies
(loans at 7 per cent);
•
Training urban poor by imparting
market-oriented skills through City
Livelihood Centres (CLCs);
•
Enabling urban poor from Self-Help
Groups (SHGs) for meeting financial
and social needs with a support of
`
10,000 per group;
•
Development of vendor markets; and
•
Constructing permanent shelters for the
urban homeless and providing other
essential services
Price stabilisation fund (PSF) for
horticultural crops
A price stabilisation fund of
`
5 billion
for select horticultural crops has been
announced. The Fund is operated by the
SFAC. Initially, the fund was used to deal
with problems in potato and onion crops.
If necessary, the fund can also take up other
crops at a later date. This intervention is
expected to regulate price volatility through
procurement by state/UT governments
and central agencies of selected produce,
maintenance of buffer stocks and regulated
release into the market. The Fund can also
be used to provide interest-free advances to
central and state agencies to procure crops
from the farmers immediately after harvest
in order to stabilise prices. Any profits made
out of dealings in crops with the help of
the Fund is ploughed back into the fund.
