The specific interventions which are being taken to address the unique challenges faced by marginalised communities in rural areas are as follows:

All rural households with at least one deprivation, as identified by the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC-2011), form the target group of Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM). In addition, households identified as poor through the process of Participatory Identification of the Poor (PIP) and duly validated by the Gram Sabha are also included as the DAY-NRLM target group.

The Mission has special focus on early inclusion of the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, persons with disability, elderly, poorest of the poor and other vulnerable sections of community into SHG fold under DAY-NRLM through participatory vulnerability assessment processes as part of social mobilisation in the States/UTs.

Provision of Vulnerability Reduction Fund (VRF) up to Rs. 1,50000 per Village Organization (VO). This corpus fund is given to VO/Primary Level Federation at Village level to address vulnerabilities faced by the individuals or household(s) or communities.

Special projects have been sanctioned for inclusion and comprehensive development of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) communities of Kerala, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh and for socio-economic development of Vantangiya and Banwariya marginalised communities in UP.

RSETIs are district-level Rural Self Employment Training Institutes managed by the Banks with active cooperation from the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD), the Government of India and the State Government. These institutions are dedicated to ensuring necessary skill training of the rural youth to mitigate the unemployment problem. The lead-bank in the district takes responsibility for creating and managing the RSETIs. MoRD is providing one-time building grants up to a maximum of Rs. 2.0 crore per RSETI for meeting the expenditure on construction of the building and other infrastructure. The State Government provides land for the construction of the RSETI building. At present, 591 RSETIs are functioning across 577 districts.

The Ministry is also implementing Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana (DDU-GKY), a placement-linked skill development program to build the capacity of rural poor youth of the age-group 15 to 35 years. This programme is being implemented since September 2014 to address the needs of domestic and global skill requirements. So far, 15,59,438 candidates have been trained under DDU-GKY.

This information was given by the Union Minister of State for Rural Development, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti in a written reply in Rajya Sabha today.

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