National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) is a poverty alleviation project implemented by Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India. This scheme is focused on promoting self-employment and organization of rural poor. The basic idea behind this programme is to organize the poor into SHG (Self Help Groups) groups and make them capable for self-employment. In 1999 after restructuring Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP), Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) launched Swarnajayanti Grameen Swarojgar Yojana (SGSY) to focus on promoting self-employment among rural poor. SGSY is now remodeled to form NRLM thereby plugging the shortfalls of SGSY programme. This scheme was launched in 2011 with a budget of $ 5.1 billion and is one of the flagship programmes of Ministry of Rural Development. This is one of the world's largest initiatives to improve the livelihood of poor. This programme is supported by World Bank with a credit of $1 Billion.

Background
The basic idea behind SGSY scheme was to form SHG groups and help them to start some entrepreneurial activities. But individual SHG groups were not able to sustain and they collapsed due to lack of initial support and skill. Here each SHG group worked individually. They got limited support for forward linkage and backward linkage. They had to face heavy competition and had little help from government. Government support limited to giving fund and forming SHG groups. They didn't concentrate on capacity building or any other forward linkages. Since each group acted individually they were not able to get help from other self-help groups. The banks which gave loan to start these programmes later on started to hesitate to give further loans as they doubted the capability of poor. Thus even a decade after its implementation 4.5 Crore rural households out of 7 Crore total rural household still need to be organized into SHGs. But in states where federations of SHGs were formed under poverty alleviation programmes, they worked in a better manner. By forming federation of SHG groups, each SHG will work closely with members of other groups in their own village and also with members of other blocks and district. This will be a bigger collective group, organizing all the rural poor in a state under one programme.

Mission, Principles & Values
The core belief of National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) is that the poor have innate capabilities and a strong desire to come out of poverty. They are entrepreneurial, an essential coping mechanism to survive under conditions of poverty. The challenge is to unleash their capabilities to generate meaningful livelihoods and enable them to come out of poverty.

Mission
To reduce poverty by enabling the poor households to access gainful self- employment and skilled wage employment opportunities resulting in appreciable improvement in their livelihoods on a sustainable basis, through building strong and sustainable grassroots institutions of the poor.

Guiding Principles

• Poor have a strong desire to come out of poverty, and they have innate capabilities.

• An external dedicated and sensitive support structure is required to induce the social mobilization, institution building and empowerment process.
• Facilitating knowledge dissemination, skill building, access to credit, access to marketing, and access to other livelihoods services enables them to enjoy a portfolio of sustainable livelihoods.

Values
The core values which guide all the activities under NRLM are as follows:

• Inclusion of the poorest, and meaningful role to the poorest in all the processes
• Transparency and accountability of all processes and institutions.
• Ownership and key role of the poor and their institutions in all stages – planning, implementation, and, monitoring
• Community self-reliance and self-dependence

Implementation of NRLM (SGSY) (year wise targets and achievements)