Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs Approved Proposal for Restructuring SJSRY

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved the proposal for restructuring of the centrally sponsored Scheme of Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana (SJSRY) in the 12th Plan. The Scheme will now be called National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM) with an allocation of approximately 6405 crore Rupees.

About National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM)

• The mission of National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM) is reduction of poverty and vulnerability of the urban poor households by enabling them to access gainful self-employment and skilled wage employment opportunities.
• The mission will also aim at providing shelter equipped with essential services to the urban homeless in a phased manner.
• Apart from this, the mission will also address livelihood concerns of the urban street vendors also by facilitating access to suitable spaces, institutional credit, social security and skills to the urban street vendors for accessing emerging market opportunities.

The primary focus of NULM will be community mobilisation and women empowerment.

• NULM envisages universal mobilisation of urban poor households into thrift and credit-based Self-Help Groups (SHGs) and their federations/collectives. The SHGs will also serve as the support system for the poor, to meet their financial and social need.
• National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM) will facilitate establishment of City Livelihood Centres (CLCs) in the Mission cities in order provide the platform whereby the urban poor can market their services and access information on self-employment, skill training and other benefits.

Target of the National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM)

• The main target of the NULM is urban poor who are occupationally vulnerable for Employment through Skills Training & Placement (EST&P).
• The mission will focus on providing assistance for development as well as upgrading of the skills of the urban poor so as to enhance their capacity for self-employment and salaried employment.
• NULM intends to provide training to the urban poor as per the skill demand from the market, so that they can set up self-employment ventures or secure salaried employment.
• Through its Self-Employment Programme (SEP), NULM will provide financial assistance to individuals and groups of urban poor to set up gainful self-employment as well as micro-enterprise ventures.
• The Support to Urban Street Vendors (USV) component will cover a socio-economic survey of street vendors, development of pro-vending urban planning and vendors’ markets, credit enablement of vendors, skill development and micro-enterprise development and convergence under various schemes of the Government.
• The aim of NULM is also to provide shelter for the urban homeless equipped with essential services. The shelters should be permanent all-weather 24 x 7 shelters for the urban homeless. Under the scheme, there will be provisions of establishing permanent community shelters for a minimum of one hundred persons, for every one lakh urban population.

Implementation of NULM

• The NULM will be implemented in two phases: Phase I (2013-2017) and Phase II (2017-2022).
• In Phase I, NULM will target all cities with a population of one lakh or more and district headquarter towns with a population of less than one lakh as per Census of India 2011. Funding of this project will be shared between the Centre and the States in the ratio of 75:25.
• For the North Eastern and Special Category States (Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand), this ratio will be 90:10.