Unlike MGNREGA, the urban livelihood mission focuses on skilling workers primarily
Though the government?s plan to launch the National Urban Livelihood Mission (NULM) looks like yet another election scheme, along the lines of the MGNREGA guaranteed jobs scheme for rural India, the two schemes have a totally different approach. For one, NULM is not guaranteeing jobs for the urban poor. Instead, it is talking of skilling 50 million persons in the next five years, and providing them with some soft loans to, if need be, set up their own businesses.
The big challenge here, of course, will be to get the scheme to scale up to even half-decent levels. So far, the National Skills Development Corporation (NSDC) through which the scheme is largely to be operationalised has managed to skill just 4 lakh persons in FY13. The reasons for this vary from not being able to get enough persons to come ahead for skilling to industry not willing to employ such persons at a higher wage. Eventually, things will boil down to the government getting in place a more relevant Apprentice Act which gives industry the flexibility of hiring more apprentices without the obligation to absorb them as full-time employees. Whether this will even be on anyone?s mind in the current atmosphere in Parliament is a different matter, but it?s clear that without this, the urban livelihood mission is going nowhere.