North East Rural Livelihood Project (NERLP)- Features, Objectives and Advantages

North East Rural Livelihood Project (NERLP)- Features, Objectives and Advantages

Question - Uniform development across India, including north eastern states is the key to India’s progress. Discuss the North East Rural Livelihood project for bringing about an improvement in rural livelihood in the NE states.

North East Rural Livelihood Project/NERLP is a central sector externally-aided project spanning across multiple NE states

• It was launched in March 2012.

• The project mainly aims to bring about improvement in rural livelihoods in NE states

• The scheme specially focuses on women, unemployed youth and weaker sections of society in 4 participating NE states

• Total project cost has been estimated at USD 144.4 million

• World Bank assistance of USD 130 million will supplement around USD 14.4 million provided by
the Union Government for funding this project

• This financial project has been created for 5 year duration

• It aims at implementing the scheme in 2 districts in Mizoram, Sikkim and Nagaland and 5 districts in Tripura

• Around 3 lakh households will benefit from the project across a total of 1645 villages, 62 blocks and 11 districts

• The following districts are being covered under this scheme in the NE:

(a) Mizoram; Aizawl and Lunglei
(b) Nagaland; Peren and Tuensang
(c) Sikkim; South Sikkim, West Sikkim Districts plus Panchayat wards of East Sikkim.
(d) Tripura; Northern and Western Districts of Tripura

Objectives of NERLP

• Objective of NERLP was to improve rural livelihoods through access to economic opportunities and improvement of resource management as well as sustainable agriculture

• The scheme envisages the creation of participatory community based institutions to improve accountability and promote sustainable development

• NERLP aims at creating sustainable community institutions for women SHGs or Self Help Groups, youth and community development groups.

• The scheme also aims to build capacity of community institutions for self governance, democratic functioning as well as bottom up planning promoting transparency and accountability

• The scheme also aims to develop collaborations for community institutions for natural resource management, sectoral economic services, market linkages and micro-finance

• The project essentially aims at creation of CDGs/Community Development Groups, SHG Village Federations, Producer Organisations and SHGs/Self Help Groups

Advantages of NERLP

• NERLP will to nurture and build capacity of community based organisational leaders and involve them in participatory decision making and development process

• NERLP also strives to provide financial support for promoting livelihood activities

• It will also facilitate technical support, expertise and knowledge transfer through partnership and collaboration

• It also stresses on provision of vocational and skills training for self business and job placement

• The scheme will also promote some livelihood clusters for self employment and job creation

• It will provide necessary linkages for institutional finance and lead to the development of value chains on specific potential products.

• The project also aims to ensure the promotion and development of sustainable SHGs

• The project also aims at increasing income level of SHG members (minimum of 60% of them) and disadvantages households by 30% in the real term

• Providing entrepreneurship development trainings, management development trainings, skill trainings and vocational trainings is another focus of this project

Facts and Stats

• The project had initially focused on institution building and building the strength of existing community institutions.

• A minimum coverage of 70% of the households of project villages was aimed for.

• Institution building has been matured in Nagaland, Sikkim and Mizoram; important progress has also been made in 2 districts of Tripura

• Towards the close of March 2015, the project has led to the formation of 13685 SHGs, 142 SHG Village Federations and 1351 CDGs

• To provide corpus funds and livelihood support, project has provided Seed Capital to 11049 SHGs and livelihood funds to 5780 SHGs to the tune of INR 22.09 crore and INR 28.24 crore respectively

• Around INR 6.52 crore has been released for entry point activities as well as execution of Community Development Plans

• NERLP has also commenced with 4 model livelihood clusters with approximate investment of INR 100 lakh on development of dairies, piggeries and goateries.

• The project has also placed a target of skill trainings to around 20,000 unemployed youths from project districts

• Project has also entered into MoUs with 16 Voluntary Training Providers either government/semi government organisations or NSDC empanelled

• As per this scheme, 1045 youths have been trained from which 519 received placement in numerous parts of the country namely in IT, healthcare, retail and hospitality

• Around 393 candidates will attain placement soon and 216 are currently undergoing training as part of this project

• Financial achievement of the project has also been impressive; of INR 90 crore, around INR 72.13 crore has been spent