National Urban Livelihoods Mission

The National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM) was launched by Manmohan Singh Government in 2013 by restructuring the Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana (SJSRY) in all district headquarters (irrespective of their population) and all the cities with population of one lakh or more. It is a flagship programme of Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation.

Focus of NULM

The key focus area of NULM are as follows:

• Organizing urban poor in Self Help Groups (SHGs)
• Creating opportunities for skill development for urban poor leading to market based employment
• Helping urban poor to set up self-employment ventures by ensuring easy access to credit.

Aim of Mission

• Providing shelter equipped with essential services in phased manner to urban poor including urban homeless
• Addressing the livelihood concerns of urban poor including urban homeless.

Seven major components of NULM

1. Social Mobilization and Institution Development (SM&ID): NULM envisages mobilisation of urban poor households into thrift and credit based SHGs and their federations/collectives.
2. Employment through Skills Training and Placement (EST&P):The mission focuses on providing assistance for skill development to enhance capacity of urban poor for self-employment or better salaried employment.
3. Self-employment Programme (SEP):It focuses on providing financial assistance to individuals/groups of urban poor for setting up gainful self-employment microenterprises/ventures, suited to their skills, aptitude, training and local conditions.
4. Capacity building and Training (CB&T): Under NULM, a multi-pronged approach is planned for continuous capacity building of SHGs, Government functionaries at Central, state and town/city levels, NGOs and other stakeholders. National and state-level mission management units are also created to support the implementation of the mission.
5. Support to Urban Street Vendors: It focuses on development of vendors market, credit enablement, socio-economic survey of street vendors, skill development and microenterprises development. It also seeks to provide social assistance to urban street vendors by converging various schemes of Government.
6. Shelter to Urban Homeless (SUH):Under it, permanent all-weather 24 x 7 sheltersequipped with essential services will be constructed.
7. Innovative and Special Projects: It focuses on the promotion of novel initiatives in the form of innovative projects.These novel initiatives must aim at catalysing sustainable approaches to urban livelihood through public, private, community partnership.

Implementation and Funding

NULM is being implemented in two phases: Phase I (2013-2017) and Phase II (2017-2022). In Phase I, all district headquarter towns with a population of less than one lakh and all cities with a population of one lakh or more and as per Census of India 2011 will be covered.  However, other towns may be allowed in exceptional cases on the request of the States.

Funding will be shared between the Centre and the States in the ratio of 75:25. For North Eastern and Special Category States (Assam, Jammu & Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh,Mizoram,Meghalaya, Manipur, Sikkim,Tripura, Nagaland, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand), this ratio will be 90:10.

Integration in Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana

The Union Government has decided to integrate both National Urban Livelihoods Mission (Ministry of Housing
and Urban Poverty Alleviation) and National Rural Livelihoods Mission (Ministry of Rural Development) to converge into a single scheme called Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana (DAY) in 2016-17.