Nai Manzil

President Pranab Mukherjee in his address to the Joint Session of both houses of Parliament on February 23, 2016, stated that the Central government has allocated more than 50% of the Ministry of Minority Affairs budget to scholarship funds for minority children.

The six notified minority communities namely, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsis and Jains, which constitute more than 19% of India’s population. Two new schemes Nai Manzil and USTAA Daimed to empower the minorities have been launched. Currently about 20,000 madarasa children are undergoing skill training under the Nai Manzil scheme.

The ‘Nai Manzil’ scheme was launched for girls in Srinagar on 20th January, 2016. Under the scheme girls from minority communities will be imparted three-month skill development training in identified sectors relevant to the region.

The scheme aims to benefit the minority youths who are school-dropouts or educated in the community education institutions like Madrasas, by providing them an integral input of formal education (up to Class VIII or X) and skill training along with certification.

This will enable them to seek better employment in the organised sector and equipping them with better lives. The scheme covers the entire country and has an outlay of Rs 650 crore for five years. The World Bank has approved the funding of $ 50 million and recommended the scheme to countries in Africa faced with similar developmental challenges.

Skills and crafts practiced by minority communities no more remained lucrative and became unattractive rendering these craftsmen to look for other means of livelihood. In order to make these skills and crafts more profitable, another scheme, “USTTAD (Upgrading the Skills and Training in Traditional Arts/ Crafts for Development),” was formally launched on 14th May, 2015, at Varanasi (UP).

The scheme aims at capacity building and updating the traditional skills of master craftsmen and artisans. The trained master craftsmen/artisan will train the minority youths in various specific traditional arts/crafts. To further support the initiative , artisans and craftsmen Ministry has signed a MoU with an E-commerce portal shopclues.com for facilitating the market linkages of crafts.

Ministry has also engaged National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), National Institute of Design (NID) and Indian Institute of Packaging (IIP) to work in various clusters for design intervention; product range development; packaging; exhibitions, fashion shows and publicity; and tying up with e-marketing portals to enhance sales and brand building.