Redesign Without Demolition: Can India Rethink Urban Livelihoods Without Orphaning Its Women's Collectives?

Redesign Without Demolition: The Real Choice in Urban Livelihoods

The question is not whether urban women's livelihoods deserve public support. Every side, including the five states that wrote to the Centre, agrees that they do. The real question is harder. Can a government rebuild a programme around the way urban poverty actually works today without first knocking down the institutions women built under the old one?

The Case for Ending the Old Mission The Indian

Express editorial calls the lapse of DAY-NULM unwise, but it never says why the Centre did it. That reason deserves a fair hearing. When the mission closed on 30 September 2024, MoHUA launched a pilot, Deendayal Jan Aajeevika Yojana-Shehari, in 25 cities. It targets six occupational groups:

• gig workers - transport workers - construction workers - waste workers - care workers - domestic workers The logic is serious. Urban poverty is often tied to occupation: unstable gig contracts, hazardous construction sites, unrecognised domestic work. The SHG model was adapted from rural India, where neighbourhood ties are strong. Migrant urban workers may need occupation-specific protection and skills, not only neighbourhood savings groups. After eleven years, redesigning a programme around evidence is not abandonment. It is governance.

The Case for Keeping the Groups Alive But a

pilot in 25 cities is not a national scheme and as of October 2026 it has not been approved as one. Meanwhile, the old mission left behind 10,02,545 SHGs covering over one crore women. Each had received a ₹10,000 revolving fund.

Their real asset is not that money but their credit history and bank linkages, built group by group over a decade. That is why Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Tripura all asked for funds to protect those linkages and the staff who maintain them.

Only two of the five are ruled by the Opposition. When states on both sides of the political divide raise the same alarm, the problem is administrative, not partisan. The contrast with rural policy is striking. Under DAY-NRLM, the Lakhpati Didi target has been doubled from 3 crore to 6 crore women.

The Centre clearly believes in women's collectives. It has stopped funding them only where it started redesigning.

Where This Leaves Us

TAN's position is that redesign and continuity are not alternatives. The pilot should prove itself while the SHG backbone stays funded. That means three things:

1. A bridge. Fund a minimal core (staff, bank-linkage support and revolving funds for active groups) until the pilot is evaluated.
2. Shared costs. The Centre and states should split that bridge cost, so neither can walk away.
3. No easy exit into cash. States should not let lapsed SHGs be replaced by cash transfers alone. A transfer supports a household for a month; a collective with a bank record supports a woman for years. Kerala's Kudumbashree shows what sustained support can grow into. Starting with credit groups, it now runs community kitchens and waste collection and trains SHGs in other states.