Vinod Bhat
New Delhi: The Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana – National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM) aims to bring a transformational change in the income levels of rural women by promoting diversified and sustainable livelihoods. Promotion of non-farm rural enterprises is a critical pathway to achieve this goal. Over the years, several non-farm livelihood schemes including Star-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme have demonstrated successful enterprise models supported by trained community cadres. These cadres act as grassroots-level catalysts by providing enterprise identification, start-up support, mentoring, and handholding.
The Ministry has committed to enabling at least 3 crore Lakhpati Didis, i.e., SHG women members earning ₹1 lakh or more per annum. The scale required to meet the Lakhpati Didi goals necessitates a massive upscaling of this cadre.
Keeping these priorities in focus a “National Campaign on Entrepreneurship” was launched by the Additional Secretary (RD) on 12th January 2026. Advisor NITI Aayog (RD&PR), Chairman NABARD and representatives of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, IFMR LEAD (KREA University), EDII and IIM Calcutta innovation park and SMDs/CEOs of SRLMs along with their teams participated in the event.
The key objective of this “National Campaign on Entrepreneurship” is to train and build capacity of 50,000 community resource persons (CRPs) on enterprise promotion and impart EDP training to 50 lakh SHG members of DAY-NRLM.
The National Campaign on Entrepreneurship presents a strategic opportunity to deepen enterprise development across India’s rural landscape, foster local economic growth and unlock the entrepreneurial potential of SHG women. This focused campaign will not only create thousands of community resource persons but also catalyse millions of rural entrepreneurs, paving the way for a resilient, inclusive, and self-reliant non-farm rural economy and opening up opportunity for linkages with formal financial institutions for grassroots enterprises and enterprise loans.
