New Delhi, September 08: The govt is mulling convergence of schemes relating to food security, education and healthcare with rural development programmes under the proposed National Rural Livelihood Mission.
“There is a thinking (in the government) that programmes of rural development ministries can be linked with those run by other ministries in rural areas to ensure that benefits of all rural development schemes reach the targeted section,” a rural development ministry official said.
Besides providing self-employment and wage employment to the rural poor, the proposed National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) seeks facilitating access to other entitlements such as food security and benefits of Indira Awas Yojna (IAY), drinking water, land improvement, education and health and risk mitigation, he added.
Under the Mission, experts at various levels will coordinate with all stakeholders for benefiting the poor in risk mitigation, food security, training and capacity building, micro financing, infrastructure development and better marketing linkages for getting appropriate prices for products manufactured by beneficiaries under NRLM, official said.
The NRLM, being designed to replace the Swarnajayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojna (SGSY), aims at reducing poverty in rural areas by strengthening the existing occupations of the rural poor and ensure their participation as beneficiaries of emerging opportunities for a sustainable livelihood.
To achieve the objective of the 11th five-year plan of broad based inclusive growth in this perspective, the ministry has envisaged a four-pronged strategy to attack rural poverty under the Mission.
These strategies include generation of self-employment in credit linked micro enterprises and salaried employment through demand driven skill development, wage employment under NREGA, payment of pension to elderly and vulnerable sections National Social Assistance Programme and income generation and social security programmes of other ministries.
—Agencies