National Rural livelihood Mission (NRLM), the restructured rural self-employment scheme will empower rural women through their mandatory inclusion in self help group (SHG) network. This was revealed in the detailed draft NRLM guidelines the rural development ministry issued last week. “Large scale successful poverty eradication programmes in the country have demonstrated that the best way to reach out to the entire family is through women. Hence, NRLM will focus on women for the primary institutions,” said the guidelines document.

“Banks in the country have had a positive experience in lending to women’s self help groups. Since banks will have a key role under NRLM, the strategy of women S.H.Gs is aligned with the banks’ positive experience with women’s groups,” it further said. The restructuring of the SGSY was proposed after studies by different organisations including National Institute of Rural Development (NIRD), Hyderabad, Bankers Institute of Rural Development, (BIRD) Lucknow, revealed its dismal performance. The Mission Mode approach under NRLM will ensure shift from the present allocation based strategy to a demand driven strategy, allowing the states to formulate their own poverty reduction action plans taking into account local factors.

Under NRLM both women and men will be organised for addressing livelihoods issues i.e. farmers organisations, milk producers’ cooperatives, weavers associations, etc. Participatory social assessments and well being analysis would be conducted to identify and rank all households according to vulnerability. This will enable special focus, right from the beginning, on poorest of poor among the BPL households. The most vulnerable households like the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs), single women, women headed households, persons with disability, landless, migrant labour, etc would receive a special focus. It will ensure adequate coverage of vulnerable sections of the society such that 50% of the beneficiaries are SC/STs, 50% are women, 15% are minorities and 3% are persons with disability.