- NEW DELHI:
- The World Bank will give India Rs5,000 crore to start a comprehensive rural livelihood mission in 12 poorest states of the country which have around 85 % of the India’s poor population. The loan will assist the government to implement its ambitious rural scheme National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) recently launched by Sonia Gandhi.
“World Bank has been associated with the project for a long time and they are going to invest around Rs5000 crore to start the livelihood mission in the country,” said an official in the rural development ministry. The NRLM scheme is being pitched as the second biggest rural scheme after National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and the government has committed to spend Rs22,500 crore for the scheme over the next plan period and is even willing to increase the corpus if the initial attempt shows favourable results.
The scheme seeks to take the existing national rural employment programme a step further by providing then bank credit subsidy, capital grant, technical support and training to rural people in relevant management and entrepreneurial skills. World Bank has put in nearly Rs3,000 crore in livelihood missions in Andhra Pradesh since 2000, which is currently the most successful model of NRLM in the country. “We have been associated with the programme in various states and now that it has been launched nationwide we will assist it,” said Parmesh Shah, lead rural development specialist, rural development department for South Asia at the World Bank.
“The project is an ambitious one but we have received positive results in many states. This is one of the programmes which has the potential to make India’s growth inclusive in the truest sense of the term,” Shah added. Shah says that the livelihood programmes have brought about reduction in poverty and massive improvements in social development indicators.
For example in Andhra Pradesh the programs have seen a five fold increase in assets owned by poor households, a 33 % increase in expenditure in education , around 65% increase in overall income levels and 15% decrease in migration in a span of 10 years.
The evaluations of the three initial Bank supported state projects have shown that these projects have resulted in household savings in excess of Rs100 crore, leveraged nearly Rs27,100 crore in credit from commercial banks and achieved Rs100 crore turnover in collective marketing of farm and non-farm produce in a span of 7-8 years. “The results are faster in states like Bihar because we are implementing them after learning from the Andhra Pradesh model. Hopefully now that it is nationwide the progress will be faster,” adds Shah.
source: http://www.articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com / by Devika Banerji / ET Bureau / Jun 13th, 2011