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The Empowered Committee of the Ministry of Rural Development, chaired by Secretary (Rural Development) Shri Rohit Kansal, cleared proposals under the Non-Farm Livelihoods component of DAY-NRLM to scale up women-led rural enterprises.
Four new Incubator proposals were considered - from Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, with IIT Patna, IIM Jammu, IIM Lucknow and IIT Gandhinagar respectively as the proposed incubator partners, together supporting more than 600 high-potential rural enterprises.
The Committee also considered expansion of the Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme (SVEP) in West Bengal and Goa, all of it directed at the national goal of 6 crore Lakhpati Didis.
Reduce rural poverty by organising poor households into Self Help Groups and enabling access to gainful self-employment and skilled wage employment. Launched by the Ministry of Rural Development in June 2011 as Aajeevika - National Rural Livelihoods Mission, restructuring the earlier Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana, and renamed DAY-NRLM in 2016.
Key: Implemented through State Rural Livelihoods Missions (SRLMs) with a three-tier community architecture - Self Help Groups at the base, Village Organisations above them and Cluster Level Federations at the top. It rests on four pillars: social mobilisation and institution building, financial inclusion, sustainable livelihoods, and social inclusion and entitlement access.
Move SHG enterprises beyond subsistence by giving them structured business support, so small ventures graduate into growth-oriented businesses.
Key: Incubation partnerships with IIMs, IITs and other leading incubation institutions covering business strategy, mentoring, financial planning, formalisation, technology adoption, market access and access to finance; enterprise selection through a merit-based Challenge Fund; State Incubation Cells institutionalise the support within SRLMs. 14 programmes are running across 13 States, supporting about 2,100 enterprises.
Raise SHG women to an annual household income of at least Rs 1 lakh, computed over at least four agricultural seasons or business cycles with an average monthly income above Rs 10,000, so the income counts as sustainable rather than one-off.
Key: The target was raised from 2 crore to 3 crore in the Interim Budget 2024-25; that target was crossed and the goal has since been set at 6 crore, the figure this release cites. Implemented under DAY-NRLM by the Ministry of Rural Development.
Build a rural non-farm entrepreneurship ecosystem by addressing the three constraints on village start-ups - finance, incubation and skills.
Key: A sub-scheme of DAY-NRLM under the Ministry of Rural Development, running since 2016 after a pilot begun in December 2015. Its distinctive instrument is a local cadre of Community Resource Persons - Enterprise Promotion (CRP-EP) who handhold rural entrepreneurs; the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII), Ahmedabad, is its technical support partner. Expansion into West Bengal and Goa was considered at this meeting.
DAY-NRLM does not stop at forming Self Help Groups. A typical SHG has 10-20 women who pool small savings and lend internally; that scale is enough for consumption smoothing but far too small to negotiate with a bank, buy inputs in bulk or reach a distant market. So SHGs in a village are federated into a Village Organisation, and Village Organisations across a cluster of villages into a Cluster Level Federation. Each rung adds bargaining power and the ability to hold larger funds. The design matters for the news here: the Incubator Sub-Scheme is an attempt to add a fourth kind of capability that federation alone does not supply - business strategy, formalisation and technology - by renting it from IIMs, IITs and incubation institutions rather than building it inside the mission. That is also why enterprises are picked through a Challenge Fund on merit instead of being allotted by quota: incubation is expensive per enterprise, so it is aimed at the minority of ventures with real growth headroom.
Simple Analogy: Savings groups are a village team. Federating them is building a league. Incubation is hiring a professional coach for the handful of players who could actually turn professional.
SHG-bank linkage is the largest microfinance channel in India, and DAY-NRLM's financial inclusion pillar is what makes SHG credit bankable - a standard subject in banking-exam general awareness.
The Lakhpati Didi target is the headline metric for the 'women-led development' framing that India carried into its G20 presidency; incubation is the supply-side answer to the question of how subsistence enterprises grow.
The Centre sets the scheme and the Empowered Committee approves; State Rural Livelihoods Missions execute, and State Incubation Cells are being created to hold the capability at state level.
SVEP's Community Resource Person-Enterprise Promotion cadre is a rural version of a business development service - locally recruited, locally paid, and the reason support survives after a programme's funding cycle ends.
GS Paper 2 > Governance > Welfare Schemes; GS Paper 3 > Inclusive Growth
General Awareness > Financial Inclusion and Government Schemes
General Awareness > Government Schemes
In the context of polity, which one of the following would you accept as the most appropriate definition of liberty?
Answer: Opportunity to develop oneself fully
DAY-NRLM, SHGs and Lakhpati Didi are perennial in UPSC Prelims governance questions and in banking general awareness on financial inclusion.
Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - National Rural Livelihoods Mission, launched June 2011 as Aajeevika by the Ministry of Rural Development and renamed in 2016.
An SHG member with annual household income of at least Rs 1 lakh, sustained across at least four agricultural seasons or business cycles with average monthly income above Rs 10,000.
Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme, a DAY-NRLM sub-scheme running since 2016 that builds a CRP-EP cadre to support village enterprises.
Community Resource Person - Enterprise Promotion, the local cadre trained under SVEP to handhold rural entrepreneurs.
The apex tier of DAY-NRLM's community architecture, above Village Organisations, which are themselves above Self Help Groups.
The merit-based competitive route used to select high-potential SHG enterprises for incubation support.