Parul
The Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) has signed an MoU with the Indian Institute of Entrepreneurship (IIE) to promote entrepreneurship at a local level amongst the rural youth. The MoU has been signed under the sponsorship and supervision of the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) on 25th March 2022.
Under the MoU, two programmes with the sole target of promoting employment opportunities in rural India, particularly developing self-employment provide a roadmap for unemployed rural people.
These two programmes are the Startup Village Entrepreneurship Programme (SVEP), and the sub-scheme of the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM).
By designing a sustainable model for SVEP, the programme aims to enable the rural poor (from the SHG ecosystem) to start their own businesses. The promotion will be achieved by using integrated ICT techniques and tools for training, capacity building, business advisory services, and the provision of loans from banks, SHGs, and federations.
IIE will act as a National Resource Organisation (NRO) for the SVEP and will provide support to the State Rural Livelihoods Mission (SRLM) for the successful implementation of the scheme. The NRO is expected to play a two-fold role in the SVEP’s implementation. Where it will include direct SVEP implementation in the blocks as implementing partners with the States, along with that it will also be responsible for scaling up the scheme based on the blocks’ experience with the SVEP and their prior experience with entrepreneurship development programmes.
The main objective of SVEP is to develop local resources by training a pool of village-level Cadres of Community Resource Persons-Enterprise Promotion (CRP-EP) and build the capacity of the NRLM and SHG federations to monitor and direct the work of the CRPEPs. This programme will also help the rural entrepreneurs to access finance for starting their enterprises from the NRLM SHGs and federations, the banking systems including the MUDRA.
Speaking on the MoU, the Secretary of MSDE, Rajesh Aggarwal said, “The SVEP being implemented by the IIE is a great way to empower the youth of rural India with the relevant skill sets and promote entrepreneurship at the local level. With the experience that IIE has, we will ensure a strong implementation mechanism and handholding support to SRLMs implementing SVEP. We are certain that this will further boost the employment opportunities in rural India with a step in the direction of Atmanirbhar Bharat.
According to the agreement, MoRD will inform all states/UTs about IIE’s empanelment as an NRO under the SVEP to help accelerate growth. In addition, IIE will work closely with SRLMs to serve as the SVEP’s National Resource Organisation. IIE and the respective SRLM will be in charge of allocating SVEP blocks for implementation. Additionally, because MoRD will not be involved in the allocation of SVEP blocks to NRO for programme implementation, a separate MoU should be signed between NRO and SRLM for SVEP implementation.
