New Delhi: On Sunday (September 17), Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the PM Vishwakarma scheme to provide loans, training and marketing support to artisan communities. However, the scheme has drawn conflicting reactions from leaders of OBC communities.
Rs 13,000 crore have been earmarked for the scheme for a period of five years, with government aiming to reach about 30 lakh families of traditional artisans and craftsmen, including weavers, goldsmiths, blacksmiths, laundry workers, and barbers. People involved in 18 specific trades will be eligible for loans up to Rs 3 lakh, at 5% interest.
The scheme was first announced during Modi’s Independence Day speech on August 15. “On this Vishwakarma Jayanti, we will give about Rs 13,000-15,000 crore to the people who live with traditional skills, who work with tools and with their own hands, mostly from the OBC community. Be it our carpenters, our goldsmiths, our masons, our laundry workers, our barber brothers, and sisters…” he said then.
Some leaders, according to The Telegraph, believe that this scheme will reinforce caste-based occupations and deny community members real progress. Others, however, saw it as an important welfare measure for ignored communities.
“This scheme will not help people from the artisan castes lead comfortable lives. It will deny them real progress,” P.C. Patanjali, chairperson of the Most Backward Classes Forum, told the newspaper. “These people largely migrate from the villages to the cities to escape the stigma attached to their caste-based occupations, and to seek better lives and better education for their children. The new scheme will push them back into their (traditional) occupations in the villages and deprive their children of the possibility of quality education. They can neither become entrepreneurs nor become part of mainstream education or administration.”
He also believes that the amounts being offered under the scheme will not be enough to actually help community members build better lives. “The government should have identified the artisan castes, exempted them from the creamy layer, and provided additional support through scholarships, residential schooling and coaching,” Patanjali said. “The aspiring entrepreneurs should have been provided with help to acquire and use advanced technologies.”
Hansaraj Jangra, president of the All India Backward Classes Federation, and Sanjay Harshwal from the Jangid Brahmin Mahasabha (an OBC rights group), told The Telegraph that the scheme was a welcome development. “The government should have started this scheme at least a year ago, but better late than never,” Harshwal said.