Survey to identify urban poverty vulnerability from Oct 1
The government will begin a door-to-door survey on October 1 to identify urban poverty among low-income households in 25 cities, targeting vulnerable groups.
New Delhi The Union government along with various civic bodies will launch a door-to-door survey to identify vulnerability to urban poverty among low-income households, targeting six specific groups, including domestic and gig workers, officials aware of the matter said.
Starting October 1, these surveys will be conducted in 25 cities across the country, including Kolkata, Chennai, Vishakhapatnam, Agra, Indore, and Varanasi, the officials said.
“Once the enumeration and profiling are done, it will be easy to map beneficiaries of 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.
According to the India Employment Report (IER) 2024 by the International Labour Organization and the Institute for Human Development, the urban poverty rate was 12.55% in 2022 compared to 13.7% in 2012. But experts warn that since there has been an increase in urbanisation, the number of urban poor has increased even though there is an improvement in percentage terms. Through this survey, officials want to ensure more beneficiaries are covered under government schemes.
The exercise 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 long and was supposed to 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), the official said requesting anonymity.
“At least one city from all states/ UTs except in which elections have been announced has been considered while selecting locations for the survey,” the official added.
He added that some skilling and micro-credit aspects of the existing schemes will be enhanced as part of the pilot. “The upper limit of loan under the self-employment vertical will be increased to ₹4 lakh from ₹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 official said. The group loan limit will be enhanced to ₹20 lakh from the existing ₹10 lakh, he added.
The ministry hosted a workshop for the pilot programme on September 23, along with officials from the targeted 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 youth, can get access to better livelihood opportunities.”
When asked, Katikithala 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. Till mid-June, the number of street vendors covered under this scheme was more than 3.35 million.
Through the SVANidhi se Samriddhi framework, beneficiaries among the family members of eight other Union government schemes such as the 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 were identified.
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.
