Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, India is progressing towards self- reliant India Mission. Covid-19 has left never-ending disruptions and an unprecedented impact on India’s economy, shaking the very base of business sectors and other units. Various issues like crashing GDP, worldwide unemployment, and the collapse of the supply chain have resulted in the embattled economy. To help recover the economy, strengthen the supply chain, and boost domestic production, Prime Minister of India, Mr. Narendra Modi in May, announced a special economic package or Self-reliant India Mission to recover the devastating condition of the Nation, intending to Make India and its people self-dependent.
About Self Reliant India Mission
The Government of India announced INR 20 lakh crore under Self-reliant India Mission. The mission focuses on making India self-reliant in vital economic sectors and improves resilience to the future economic downturn. While the package targets various sectors, a few key ones especially lend themselves to innovations, reformations, and widespread participation by the country’s MSME and startup ecosystem. Self-reliant India Mission is mostly focusing upon the land, labor, equity, and laws. It is determined to revive sectors like a cottage industry, startups, MSMEs, small businesses, other enterprises, etc. This economic package is basically for our cottage industry, home industry, our small-scale industry, and our MSMEs, a means of livelihood for millions of people, which is the firm foundation for a self-reliant India. It also tends to provide means of livelihood and raise the standard of living of the poor and needy people who got severely hit by the aftereffects of lockdown and pandemic crisis. Self-Reliant India’s mission gives a boost to the economic potential of India.
The prime minister’s recent call for Self-reliance India also aims to become vocal for local products, which have stimulated positive vibes in the domestic and overseas markets. It aims at not only manufacturing products but also promoting the same at national and global levels while depending less on imported goods.
Goal and objective of Self-reliant India Mission
One of the most important goals of Self-reliant India’s mission is to combine all the public and private sectors’ efforts and potential to work together with a familiar national spirit to overcome the aftershocks of the coronavirus pandemic. It aims at stabilizing the situation prevailing in the Nation by providing specific reliefs and exemptions to certain sectors of society, enabling them to re-start their lives put at a halt and grab for themselves a means to earn a daily living by contributing their bit in the economy. Self-Reliant India Mission has five pillars of strength: economy, infrastructure, system, demand, and demography.
Progress of Self Reliant Mission
Self-reliant India Mission seeks to motivate and push local and indigenous businesses and keep them at par with other rising companies in these difficult times. While the call taken by our Prime Minister directs the effort of the Government in the right direction, it is not the one that cuts out entirely or shuts off collaborations and businesses with the outside world. It is all about empowering the progress of a developing nation like India and keeping moving in this trajectory, keeping it self-motivating and fuelling itself through this endeavor. Some of the significant contributions of Self-reliance India include:
- India has become self-sufficient in terms of food grains today. India is not only in a condition to feed its people. It is now capable of feeding the entire world, which could have been possible because of the financial credits/ concessional loans provided as part of the Self-reliant
- India mission to boost crop management, repayment, and rural banks’ efficiency, and infrastructure development, etc. Advancements in technology that have improved the quality of agricultural produce.
- India is now self-sufficient in the manufacturing of medical equipment and the health sector. It has produced good masks, PPE kits, medicines, ventilators, etc. The expansion of the PPE manufacturing industry in India, from almost non-existent local production to the world’s 2nd largest producer, is a clear indication of India’s unmatched potential. Today there are approximately 1564 labs for Covid19 testing in the country, conducting more than 9.5 lakh tests per day. All this could have been attainable because of the guidelines of the Self-reliant India Mission.
- More than seven crore indigenous families have been provided with free gas cylinders and other basics. Foodgrains were distributed to 80 crore people for free of cost. Direct cash transfer of 90 thousand crores is made available to needy families coming under the BPL category.
- Under the Self-reliant India mission, there is a plan to form an economic cluster to make rural areas self-sufficient. By now, almost 150000 villages have received optical fiber.
- The new consumer protection act, 2019, was introduced under the self-reliant India mission to save the customers from the garb of fraud and cheating and make them self-sufficient.
- Women are becoming self-sufficient. There are approximately 22 crore women accounts in 40 crore Jan Dhan accounts. More than 70% of the 25 crore Mudra loans were in favor of women. The women have become self-sufficient in real sense post this Self reliant India Mission.
- Our country has been prosperous in reducing imports and increasing exports. Foreign capital investment terms got easy. Leading banks got integrated as a result of the Self-Reliant India Mission.
- More financial support was given to MSME Sector, where free collateral loans were provided under Self-Reliant India Mission to small sectors to encourage business activities in rural and underdeveloped areas.
The country received a record of $73 billion of foreign direct investment in 2019-20 with an 18% growth post this Self-reliant India mission announcement.
Various measures such as ease of doing business, promotion of local manufactured products and industries, attention to farmers & agriculture, strengthening of infrastructure facilities, focus on MSMEs, and the service sector has helped Indian in becoming an Aatm Nirbhar Bharat or self-reliant Nation. They have very much helped in accomplishing the Self-Reliant India Mission.
