Nagaland State Rural Livelihood Mission (NSRLM)

What is the Nagaland State Rural Livelihood Mission?

Nagaland State Rural Livelihood Mission (NSRLM) is the state's rural poverty-reduction mission, run by the Department of Rural Development, Government of Nagaland. NSRLM is a registered society under the Societies Registration Act, 1860 and the Nagaland Societies Registration Act, and it was established on 13 September 2012 as the implementing agency in Nagaland for the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - National Rural Livelihood Mission (DAY-NRLM).

NSRLM is not a cash-transfer scheme. According to the mission's own overview page, it exists to build institutions of the poor: Self Help Groups (SHGs), Village Level Organisations (VLOs) and Cluster Level Federations (CLFs), and to route credit, skills, markets and government convergence through those institutions. Its stated mission is "to reduce poverty by enabling the poor households to access gainful self-employment and skilled wage employment opportunities, resulting in an appreciable improvement in their livelihoods on a sustainable basis, through building strong grassroots institutions of the poor."

NSRLM works on four operational objectives:

• Mobilising poor households into functionally effective SHGs and their federations.
• Enhancing access to bank credit and to financial, technical and marketing services.
• Building capacities and skills for gainful and sustainable livelihoods development.
• Converging various schemes for efficient delivery of social and economic support services to poor households.

The mission's guiding principle, stated on the portal, is that poor households in Nagaland have the innate capacity to reduce their own poverty given access to skilled wage employment, self-employment and strong grassroots institutions.

What has NSRLM achieved in Nagaland?

The Rural Development Department publishes a cumulative snapshot of the State Mission's performance:

The department's targeting frame is the Poorest of the Poor (PoP) household. NSRLM's coverage note describes the aim as reaching PoP households across the state and staying engaged with them "till they cross the Rubicon (threshold) of poverty". In the mission's early years, Tuensang and Peren districts were under the separate North East Rural Livelihoods Project (NERLP), and in 2013-14 nine blocks across nine districts were taken up as Intensive Resource Blocks with the rest treated as non-intensive.

What financial support flows through NSRLM?

Community Investment Fund (CIF). According to the Rural Development Department, Rs 6,579 lakh has been released as Community Investment Fund to SHGs in Nagaland for undertaking Income Generating Activities and raising household income through women SHG members. CIF is placed with the group as a corpus, and the group on-lends to its own members.

Bank credit. NSRLM's reported financial-inclusion work includes 291 SHGs accessing bank credit worth Rs 328 lakh in a single reporting year, and 24,207 SHG members accessing Rs 165 lakh through the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana.

Banking access at the doorstep. NSRLM has trained and positioned 87 Bank Sakhis in banks to serve SHGs and 691 Bima Sakhis for insurance outreach. Under Mission One GP One BC, 15 Banking Correspondents and 15 DigiPay Sakhis have been deployed.

Vehicles under AGEY. Under the Aajeevika Gramin Express Yojana, 30 vehicles across 29 blocks were placed to connect remote villages to markets. The vehicles are procured by SHG members as interest-free loans from the CIF, repayable within 5 years, while the AGEY fund stays as SHG corpus to cover more beneficiaries later.

Federation strengthening. NSRLM had formed 24 Model Cluster Level Federations as financial intermediaries, with a plan for an additional 58 to cover all 74 blocks.

Who is eligible for NSRLM, and who is not?

Your household can be mobilised if:

• It is a rural household in Nagaland living in a village covered by intensive intervention to 1,167 villages across all 11 districts and 74 blocks.
• It falls in the Poorest of the Poor category identified through the participatory identification process, with the SECC list of 1,80,369 households as the frame.
• A woman member of the household is willing to join or form a Self Help Group and follow the group's savings and meeting discipline.
• It includes a vulnerable member — NSRLM has specifically included 6,790 vulnerable households with elderly members or persons with disabilities into the SHG fold, and mobilised 1,106 households exclusively into 143 Special SHGs.

Your household is not eligible if:

• It is an urban household. NSRLM is a rural livelihoods mission; urban poor are covered by the separate DAY-NULM stream through the Urban Development Department.
• It is in a village not yet covered by intensive intervention. Mobilisation is sequenced village by village, so a household in an uncovered village cannot apply individually and must wait for the block plan to reach it.
• It seeks a personal cash grant. Individuals cannot apply to NSRLM for money. Funds move to the SHG, and the group decides internal lending.

How to apply to join an NSRLM Self Help Group

1. Find the SHG or Village Level Organisation already working in your village. NSRLM has 11,672 SHGs and 793 VLOs across the state, so most covered villages already have a group you can approach.
2. Attend the group's meeting and ask to be enrolled as a member. Community resource persons and the VLO handle enrolment locally; there is no online individual form.
3. If no group exists, contact the Block Mission Management Unit for your block through the Block Development Office, and ask for support to form a new SHG. NSRLM's dedicated support structure exists precisely to induce this social-mobilisation process.
4. Open the SHG savings account with the bank the group selects, and start regular savings and weekly or fortnightly meetings. Bank Sakhis positioned by NSRLM can assist.
5. Complete the group's grading. Once the SHG demonstrates regular meetings, savings, internal lending and repayment, it becomes eligible for Community Investment Fund and for bank linkage.
6. Apply as a group for CIF or bank credit through the VLO and the Cluster Level Federation, with a micro-plan for the income generating activity you intend to take up.

What livelihood support can an SHG member get?

NSRLM's livelihoods vertical runs several distinct lines of support:

• Community Managed Custom Hiring Centres (CM-CHC). NSRLM has promoted 100 CM-CHCs stocked with improvised and mechanised farming tools, specifically to reduce drudgery for Mahila Kisans engaged in farming.
• Agro Ecological Practices (AEP), intensified in 8,170 households.
• Agri-Nutri Kitchen Gardens, covering more than 15,000 households to raise nutritional intake, especially for women and children.
• Producer Groups and Producer Enterprises. 18 Producer Groups cover 815 households, and one Producer Enterprise in piggery covers 613 households across 2 blocks, with an annual turnover of Rs 71.74 lakh.
• Rooftop rainwater harvesting, with 500 units planned in a single year.
• SVEP, DDU-GKY and RSETI, which together account for 4,017 entrepreneurs, 681 placements and 1,091 self-employed rural youths.

Nagaland is also one of the country's pilot states for gender, where gender mainstreaming has been consciously promoted across all verticals with the objective of improving the status and health of women in the state.

What did NSRLM do during COVID-19?

The Rural Development Department records NSRLM's pandemic response as an example of what the SHG network can do. Working through its groups across 11 districts and 74 blocks, NSRLM reached 1,14,463 households with COVID-19 information, produced 1,12,533 face masks and 944 litres of hand sanitiser, installed 2,316 bamboo-pole handwash stations at village entry points and gathering places, and supplied 64.43 tonnes of essentials, earning Rs 53.64 lakh for members during the lockdown period.

Why do SHGs fail to get NSRLM funds?

• Irregular meetings or savings; grading is the gate to CIF and bank linkage, and a group that does not meet and save regularly will not clear it.
• Poor repayment record on earlier internal loans or bank credit.
• Incomplete books. The minutes book, savings register and loan ledger must be maintained for the group to be assessed.
• No bank account or an account that is dormant.
• The village is not yet an intensive village, so no CIF allocation exists for it in the current block plan.
• A weak micro-plan for the income generating activity, with no realistic market or repayment path.

The remedy in almost every case runs through the Village Level Organisation and the Block Mission Management Unit, not through the state office.

Where do I contact NSRLM?

• Office: Nagaland State Rural Livelihoods Mission, Directorate of Rural Development, New Secretariat Road, Kohima-797001, Nagaland
• Phone: 0370-2270141
• Email: mdnsrlm@gmail.com
• Portal: nsrlm.nagaland.gov.in
• Training partner: State Institute of Rural Development (SIRD), Below Civil Secretariat, Thizama Road, Kohima-797004, phone 0370-2270454 / 0370-2270450

NSRLM also plays a delivery role for other Nagaland schemes. Rural households enrolling in the Chief Minister's Life Insurance Scheme (CMLIS) do so through their NSRLM village representative rather than by filing a physical form, and the mission partnered with the Animal Husbandry & Veterinary Services department on the state's Digital Piggery Insurance initiative. Membership of an SHG is therefore also the practical route to several other state benefits.

How to check your application status

NSRLM does not run an individual online application, so there is no personal login or acknowledgement number to track. Because every benefit routes through your Self Help Group rather than through you as an individual, status checking works at the group level, not the applicant level.

• Ask at your SHG's weekly or fortnightly meeting. The group's book-keeper or the Community Resource Person tracks where the group stands: whether the SHG has completed grading, whether its Community Investment Fund request has been forwarded, or whether a bank-linkage application is pending with the branch.
• Check with the Village Level Organisation (VLO). Your SHG's request for CIF or bank credit passes through the VLO before it reaches the Cluster Level Federation and the Block Mission Management Unit. The VLO office bearers can tell you which stage a group's file has reached.
• Follow up with the Block Mission Management Unit (BMMU). This is the operational office for your block and holds the working file on grading status, CIF sanction, and fund release for every SHG under it. A visit or phone call to the BMMU through the Block Development Office is the most reliable way to get a concrete answer.
• For bank credit specifically, check with the branch where the SHG account is held. Bank Sakhis positioned by NSRLM at partner branches can look up whether a credit-linkage application is under process, sanctioned, or disbursed.
• For state-level escalation, if the block office cannot resolve the query, contact the NSRLM state office in Kohima at 0370-2270141 or mdnsrlm@gmail.com, quoting the SHG's name, VLO, and block.

Since disbursement moves from the state mission to the CLF to the VLO to the SHG, delays are usually visible at one of these intermediate levels well before they would show up as a rejection, so checking with the VLO or BMMU is more useful than waiting for a final outcome.