Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana – National Rural Livelihoods Mission

About Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana – National Rural Livelihoods Mission

Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana – National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM) is the flagship programme of the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) for cutting poverty by building strong institutions of the poor — particularly women — and connecting these institutions to financial services and livelihood opportunities. DAY-NRLM follows a demand-driven approach, letting States design their own state-specific poverty-reduction action plans. Blocks and districts where every DAY-NRLM component is rolled out, whether through the SRLMs, partner institutions, or NGOs, are termed intensive blocks and districts, while the rest are non-intensive. National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) is itself a restructured version of the earlier Swarnajayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojana (SGSY). NRLM was renamed DAY-NRLM (Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana – National Rural Livelihoods Mission) with effect from March 29, 2016.

NRLM set out to cover 7 crore rural poor households across 600 districts, 6,000 blocks, 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats, and 6 lakh villages nationwide, through self-managed Self Help Groups (SHGs) and their federations, supporting them toward livelihood collectives over 8-10 years. Alongside this, the poor are to be helped toward greater access to their rights, entitlements, and public services, more diversified risk, and stronger social indicators of empowerment. NRLM works by tapping the poor’s own capabilities and pairing them with capacities — information, knowledge, skills, tools, finance, and collectivization — so they can take part in the country’s growing economy.

The Mission

“To reduce poverty by enabling the poor households to access gainful self-employment and skilled wage employment opportunities, resulting in appreciable improvement in their livelihoods on a sustainable basis, through building strong grassroots institutions of the poor.”

The Core Values

Inclusion of the poorest, and a meaningful role for the poorest in every process Transparency and accountability across all processes and institutions Ownership and a central role for the poor and their institutions at every stage – planning, implementation, and monitoring Community self-reliance and self-dependence

NRLM is implemented in Mission Mode, which enables – (a) a shift from the earlier allocation-based strategy to a demand-driven strategy that lets states craft their own livelihoods-based poverty-reduction action plans, (b) a focus on targets, outcomes, and time-bound delivery, (c) continuous capacity building, imparting the necessary skills and forging links to livelihood opportunities for the poor, including those emerging in the organized sector, and (d) monitoring against poverty-outcome targets.

Since NRLM follows a demand-driven strategy, States have the flexibility to draw up their own livelihoods-based perspective plans and annual action plans for poverty reduction. The overall plans stay within each state’s allocation, based on relative poverty ratios.