Govt launches second phase of entrepreneurship campaign for rural women

Representative Image: Under the campaign, the government has set a target of providing entrepreneurship and livelihood training to five lakh SHG women | Image: Canva

The Centre on Friday launched the second phase of its national campaign on entrepreneurship under the rural livelihoods mission, seeking to turn more livelihood activities of self-help group women into sustainable enterprises and accelerate progress towards its target of creating six crore 'Lakhpati Didis'.

The three-month 'National Campaign on Entrepreneurship-II', launched by Rural Development Secretary Rohit Kansal, will go on from August 21 to November 21 and focus on farm and non-farm enterprises, formalisation of businesses and marketing of products made by self-help groups.

The campaign was launched on World Entrepreneurs Day and builds on the experience of its first phase, with greater emphasis on enterprise handholding, strengthening producer institutions and simplifying implementation processes.

Under the campaign, the government has set a target of providing entrepreneurship and livelihood training to five lakh SHG women and supporting the formalisation of 50,000 enterprises.

It also aims to orient 50,000 community cadres, strengthen producer groups and producer enterprises by adding two lakh members, promote agro-ecological practices among 20 lakh women and onboard 25,000 SHG members on e-commerce platforms.

The initiative will promote digital commerce through platforms such as ONDC and GeM and facilitate buyer-seller meets and linkages with buyers, aggregators, retailers and institutional purchasers.

Community resource persons for enterprise promotion and business development service providers will be recognised as 'Udyam Sakhis' under the campaign to give greater visibility to the community cadre working to promote rural enterprises.

States will undertake entrepreneurship development training, exposure visits and programmes on business planning, financial literacy, product development, branding and digital marketing.

Kansal also released the first edition of 'Sankalp Shakti', a monthly rural enterprise technical bulletin under the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihoods Mission.

The bulletin will focus on issues related to the empowerment and enterprise development of Lakhpati Didis.

The ministry said the campaign will seek to strengthen the farm and non-farm livelihood architecture by converting viable livelihood activities into women-led enterprises, rather than treating farm livelihoods merely as training interventions.

The launch event was attended by the secretaries and principal secretaries of rural development departments of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, West Bengal and Goa, while state mission directors and CEOs of 34 state rural livelihoods missions participated virtually.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)