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Centre to conduct survey to identify poverty levels among urban workers

Sep 29, 2024 03:30 PM IST

The survey will target six groups, including construction workers, gig workers, waste workers, care workers, domestic workers and transportation workers

To identify vulnerability to urban poverty, the Union government along with civic bodies will launch a door-to-door survey for socio-economic profiling of low-income households, targeting six groups, including domestic and gig workers.

Starting October 1, these surveys will be conducted in 25 cities across India, including Kolkata, Chennai, Vishakhapatnam, Agra, Indore and Varanasi. (Representational image)
Starting October 1, these surveys will be conducted in 25 cities across India, including Kolkata, Chennai, Vishakhapatnam, Agra, Indore and Varanasi. (Representational image)

Starting October 1, these surveys will be conducted in 25 cities across India. Some of these cities are Kolkata, Chennai, Vishakhapatnam, Agra, Indore, and Varanasi.

“Once the enumeration and profiling are done, it will be easy to map beneficiaries with different central and state social security schemes such as government insurance cover to benefit households as a whole,” a senior official in the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA) said.

This will be part of a pilot project for MoHUA’s new urban poverty alleviation programme among vulnerable groups targeting construction workers, gig workers, waste workers, care workers, domestic workers, and transportation workers. A revamped urban livelihoods mission has been in the works for a long time and was supposed to be launched in 2023, but there was no such initiative even in 2024.

This pilot with a funding of 180 crore, comprising various verticals, will continue for three months and the learnings will be used to formulate a new scheme to replace the existing Deendayal Antyoday Yojana - National Urban Livelihood Mission (DAY-NULM).

“At least one city from all states/ UTs except in which elections have been announced have been considered while selecting the cities,” the official added.

The official further said that some skilling and micro-credit aspects of the existing schemes will be enhanced as part of this pilot. “The upper limit of loan facility under the self-employment vertical will be increased to 4 lakh for individuals, which was 2 lakh earlier for micro-entrepreneurs. Along with that, we will facilitate entrepreneurship development training, financial and digital literacy along with supporting market linkages.” The group loan limit will be increased to 20 lakh from the existing 10 lakh.

The ministry hosted a workshop for this pilot programme on September 23 along with officials from these states and cities. Speaking at that workshop. Srinivas Katikithala, secretary at MoHUA said, “Urbanisation provides various opportunities and there is a need to harness these opportunities through innovative thinking so that the urban poor particularly the vulnerable groups, including youths, can get access to better livelihood opportunities.” Speaking with HT, he refused to give a timeline for the launch of the new mission and said the finer details are yet to be worked out.

The socio-economic profiling skeleton already exists at various levels as part of the PM SVANidhi se Samriddhi scheme (a micro-credit facility for street vendors) which benefitted the families of those who were enrolled in that programme. Through this, eight Union government schemes such as PM Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana, PM Suraksha Bima Yojana, PM Jan Dhan Yojana, One Nation One Ration Card, PM Shram Yogi Maandhan Yojana, Registration under Building and other Construction Workers, Janani Suraksha Yojana and PM Matru Vandana Yojana. Till mid-June, the number of street vendors covered under this scheme was more than 3.35 million.

Till June this year since the start of DAY-NULM in June 2014, more than 3.7 million livelihoods and 9.6 million self-help groups have been created, according to government data. Another 1.5 million odd candidates have been skilled.

Aravind Unni, an independent expert on urban poverty alleviation policies, said, “Expanding the beneficiary base by bringing in more vulnerable groups is a welcome step.” But he said NULM 2.0, which has been under discussion for more than two years, should be rolled out quickly. He also advocated for more transparency and continued dialogue with more stakeholders to formulate the schemes under the mission. “We do not know if any assessment studies on the impact of the previous 10 years and if so, they should be in public domain,” he added.

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