National Rural Livelihoods Mission

Odisha has become the first state in the country to launch National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) in its bid to bring down rural poverty by promoting diversified and gainful self-employment to the rural poor. NRLM will replace the Swarnajayanti Gram Swrojgar Yojana (SGSY) aimed at poverty reduction. The main weaknesses of the SGSY were uneven spread in the formation of Self-Help Groups (SHGs), high attrition rate in the SHGs, lack of adequate access to banking facilities, lack of capacity building and training and inadequate risk mitigation. NRLM would provide greater focus and momentum for poverty reduction to achieve the various Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

In the first phase, NRLM has been launched in 38 backward poverty stricken blocks of 10 districts where the World Bank-funded Targeted Rural Initiatives for Poverty Termination and Infrastructure (TRIPTI) is being implemented. Though objectives of NRLM and TRIPTI are almost same, the former is now restructured to target the poorest of the poor who have been uncovered yet. In the second phase of the project, Schedule Areas, including four blocks from 11 districts covered under Western Orissa Rural Livelihoods Project (WORLP), JEEVIKA and The Orissa Tribal Empowerment and Livelihood Programme (OTELP) and five Left Wing Extremists- affected districts such as Gajapati, Malkangiri, Rayagada, Sambalpur and Deogarh will be covered. By the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan, all 30 districts would have come under NRLM. The programme is expected to adopt a multipronged strategy to reduce poverty by enabling the poor households to access gainful self-employment and skilled wage employment opportunities. This programme is designed in a way to be implemented by a dedicated support structure starting from bottom to top. Cluster-level forum and gram panchayat level forum will be constituted and through them, various activities for livelihood generation will be created, so that wastage of funds can be stopped and maximum dividend of the project is made available to the needy section of the society