National Rural Liveli-hood Mission-Aajeevika

- It is the skill and placement initiative of the Ministry of Rural Development. It is a part of the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) - the Mission for "Poverty Reduction" is called Aajeevika.
- It evolved out of the need to diversify incomes of the rural poor and provide them with jobs with regular monthly wages at or above the minimum wages.
- Under this mission, Self-help Groups (SHGs) at the village level is constituted in the form of federation and these SHGs provide beneficial self-employment opportunities to the rural people for ensuring better and stable livelihood.
- The new mission gives focus on women, scheduled caste/scheduled tribes, minorities and disabled people. The mission proposes to include atleast one woman member of the identified poor family in Self-Help Group.
- The SGSY now restructured as the NRLM has been renamed Aajeevika and implemented in mission mode across the country since 2011.
- The main features of Aajeevika are :
(a) One woman member from each identified rural poor household to be brought under the SHG network,
(b) Ensuring 50 per cent of the beneficiaries from SC/STs, 15 per cent from minorities, and 3 per cent persons with disability while keeping in view the ultimate target of 100 per cent coverage of BPL families,
(c) Training for capacity building and skill development,
(d) Ensuring revolving fund and capital subsidy,
(e) Financial inclusion,
(f) Provision of interest subsidy,
(g) Backward and forward linkages, and
(h) Promoting innovations.
- Phased implementation- Aajeevika is a process-intensive, driven large scale poverty alleviation and women mpowerment programme. It has adopted a phased implementation approach for reaching out to all villages in all blocks of the State as mentioned below :
Bharat Nirman Yojana
Accepting the policy 'a step towards village', Union Government has launched a new scheme, named 'Bharat Nirman Yojana' on December 16, 2005. This scheme aims at developing rural infrastructure. The duration of implementing this scheme has been determined for four years with the expected expenditure of Rs.174000 crore.
The major six sectors & their targets for next four years are:
Irrigation: To ensure irrigation for additional one crore hectare of land by 2009.
Roads: To link all villages of 1000 population with roads and also to link all ST and hilly villages upto 500 population with roads. Upto December 2012 a total of 47354 habitations have been connected under Bharat Nirman out of 63940 habitations to be connected while works for 60421 habitations is sanctioned.
Housing: Construction of 60 lakh additional houses for the poor. Under Bharat Nirman Programme Phase-I, 60 lakh houses were envisaged to be constructed under Indira Gandhi Avas Yojana all over the country during the four years i.e., from 2005-06 to 2008-09. Against this target, 71·761akh houses were constructed with an expwditure of Rs. 21720·39 crore. Target for Phase-Il under Bharat Nirman is 120 lakh houses over a period of 5 years (2009-10 to 2013-14). During the first three years more than 85·72 lakh houses have been constructed.
Water Supply: To ensure drinking water to all remaining 74000 villages.
Electrification: To supply electricity to all remaining 125000 villages & to provide electricity connection to 2·3 crore houses.
Rural Communication : To provide telephone facility to all remaining 66822 villages.