47.The Swarna Jayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojna (SGSY) is being restructured as the National Rural Livelihood Mission to make it universal in application, focused in approach and time bound for poverty eradication by 2014-15.Stress will be laid on the formation of women Self Help Groups (SHGs).Apart from providing capital subsidy at an enhanced rate, it is also proposed to provide interest subsidy to poor households for loans upto Rs. one lakh from banks.
48.The Women's Self Help Group movement is bringing about a profound transformation in rural areas. There are today over 22 lakh such groups linked with banks. Our objective is to enrol at least 50% of all rural women in India as members of SHGs over the next five years and link these SHGs to banks.
49.The Rashtriya Mahila Kosh has been working towards the facilitation of credit support or micro finance to poor women and has developed a number of innovative schemes for their benefit.In recognition of its role as an instrument of socio-economic change and development, the corpus of the Kosh, which at present is Rs.100 crore, would be raised to Rs.500 crore, over the next few years.
Female literacy
50.The low level of female literacy continues to be a matter of grave concern.It has, therefore, been decided to launch a National Mission for Female Literacy, with focus on minorities, SC, ST and other marginalised groups.The aim will be to reduce by half, the current level of female illiteracy, in three years.
Integrated Child Development Services
51.Government is committed to universalisation of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme in the country.By March 2012, all services under ICDS would be extended, with quality, to every child under the age of six.
Student Loans to Weaker Sections
52.To enable students from economically weaker sections to access higher education, it is proposed to introduce a scheme to provide them full interest subsidy during the period of moratorium. It will cover loans taken by such students from scheduled banks to pursue any of the approved courses of study, in technical and professional streams, from recognised institutions in India .It is estimated that over 5 lakh students would avail of this benefit.
Welfare of Minorities
53.The Plan outlay of Ministry of Minority Affairs has been enhanced from Rs.1,000 crore in BE 2008-09 to Rs.1,740 crore in 2009-10, registering an increase of 74%. This includes Rs.990 crore for Multi-Sectoral Development Programme for Minorities in selected minority concentration districts, Grants-in-aid to Maulana Azad Education Foundation which is almost doubled, and provisions for National Minorities Development and Finance Corporation and Pre-Matric and Post-Matric Scholarships for Minorities. Allocations have also been made for the new schemes of National Fellowship for Students from the Minority Community and Grants-in-aid to Central Wakf Council for computerization of records of State Wakf Boards.
54.Aligarh Muslim University has decided to establish its campuses at Murshidabad in West Bengal and Malappuram in Kerala. I propose to make an allocation of Rs.25 crore each for these two campuses.
Welfare of workers in the unorganised sector
55.The unorganised or informal sector of our economy accounts for 92% of the employment and absorbs bulk of the annual increase in our labour force. The Unorganised Workers Social Security Bill, 2007 has now been passed by both Houses of Parliament. I have already initiated action to ensure that social security schemes for occupations like weavers, fishermen and women, toddy tappers, leather and handicraft workers, plantation labour, construction labour, mine workers, bidi workers, and rikshaw pullers are implemented at the earliest. Necessary financial allocations will be made for these schemes.
Employment Exchanges
56.I propose to launch a new project for modernisation of the Employment Exchanges in public private partnership so that a job seeker can register on-line from anywhere and approach any employment exchange. Under the project, a national web portal with common software will be developed.This will contain all the data regarding availability of skilled persons on the one hand and requirements of skilled persons by the industry on the other.It will help youth get placed and enable industry to procure required skills on real time basis.
Handlooms
57.In the last Budget two mega handloom clusters at Varanasi and Sibsagar and two mega powerloom clusters at Erode and Bhiwandi were approved.They are under successful implementation.I propose to add one handloom mega cluster each in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu and one powerloom mega cluster in Rajasthan.These will help preserve the magnificent textile traditions in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu and generate thousands of jobs in Rajasthan.In addition, I propose to add new mega clusters for Carpets in Srinagar (J&K) and Mirzapur (UP).
Health
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