Some Important Programmes in Livelihoods: Searching for Focus?
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list and to include all the needy and poor,
NRLMundertakes community-basedprocess
i.e., participation of the poor in the process
of identifying those target groups which
are approved by Gram Panchayats. NRLM
ensures adequate coverage of vulnerable sec-
tions of the society such that 50 per cent of
the beneficiaries are SC/STs, 15 per cent are
minorities and 3 per cent are persons with
disability, while keeping in view the ulti-
mate target of 100 per cent coverage of BPL
families. The recent Socio-economic and
Caste Census (SECC) is perceived to provide
reliable data on poverty level, income level
and excluded groups. NRLMhas advised the
state units to make the SECC findings, the
basis of their planning.
NRLM believes that institutions of the
poor such as self-help groups (SHGs) and
their village organisations (VOs) and higher
level federations at cluster and block levels
are necessary to provide space, voice and
resources for the poor and to reduce their
dependence on external agencies (Box 3.2).
In addition, NRLMwould promote special-
ised institutions like livelihoods collectives,
producers’ cooperatives/companies for
livelihoods promotion to deliver economies
of scale, backward and forward linkages and
access to information, credit, technology,
markets etc. Thus the project would provide
support to create and strengthen livelihoods
through training, capacity building, enter-
prise development and placement in jobs
after suitable vocational skills training.
Self-help groups and federations
Poor women are mobilised into homog-
enous groups of 10 to 20 and guided to build
social capital through bonding, training and
skill building. The groups are encouraged to
save some small amounts at regular intervals
(weekly, fortnightly or monthly as decided
by the groups). Over a six-month-period,
the groups are trained to become disciplined
financial intermediaries that provide loans
to other group members out of these sav-
ings. The SHGs are linked to a bank at this
stage through a savings bank account.
The groups are provided with revolving
fund assistance once they demonstrate their
resolve to function as cohesive units after
the first six months. Microcredit planning
is initiated after six months of the group,
where in, each member of a SHG makes a
household investment plan and the Micro
Credit Investment Plan is an aggregation
of all the household investment plans of
all the SHG members. The Plan addresses
the members’ investment needs for income
generation and is a process-oriented docu-
ment which is to be re-visited periodically.
The Plan ascertains the credit demand of the
group for different purposes. Subsequently,
a community investment fund is contrib-
uted at village organisation to enable the
groups to take livelihood initiatives either
individually or as a group.
The project personnel facilitate a bank
loan for the group that enables members to
take up the activities they had proposed in
the plan. Beyond this, women farmers are
trained under Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran
Pariyojana (MKSP) to become better farm-
ers and thereby improve their income levels.
Box 3.2:
A typical block outcome
Expected outcomes in a typical intensive
block which is supported for 10 years.
•
13,500 poor families (90 per cent of NRLM
target group) in the block mobilised into
1200 SHGs
•
Federations of SHGs at village level – 120
VLFs, Cluster level federations – 4 CLFs
and 1 Block level federation formed/
strengthened.
•
Each household would have borrowed at
least
`
1 Lakh as loan in multiple doses,
and another
`
1 –
`
2 lakhs from their own
savings and community funds (provided
by the project).
•
Around 10,800 households (80 per cent)
pursuring at least two sustainable
livelihoods, initiated by the project.
•
4,500 most vulnerable households,
benefited from special food security and
vulnerability reduction intervention.
Source:
Website of MoRD.
