Baseline survey crucial in shaping roadmap to tackle unemployment: Chief Secy

Jammu, Feb 17: Chief Secretary, Atal Dulloo, Tuesday convened a meeting with all the stakeholders to assess outcomes of a month long baseline survey conducted under Mission Yuva Udyami Vikas Abhiyan (YUVA) aiming identification of potential entrepreneurs and challenges faced by the existing enterprises in J&K.
The survey, carried out digitally from Ist of January this year, encompassed whole adult population of the UT residing in both rural and urban areas. The mammoth exercise was accomplished with the help of nearly 18,000 investigators and 800 supervisors who visited around 23.64 lakh households in different districts of J&K to identify the potential entrepreneurs (PEs).
Dulloo, while making observations about this survey, remarked that carrying out such a massive exercise in record time is commendable. He termed it crucial for determining a roadmap to deal with the unemployment issue in the region. He impressed upon the concerned to come up with a comprehensive report based on the insights made in the survey. He advised for stacking the data so that the relevant stacks are used by the Universities and research institutions for completing research papers over the same subject matter.
The Chief Secretary also advised the developers to separately categorise the self employment schemes from social security and others. He stressed on making provision of scheme advisor in the YUVA application so that the potential entrepreneurs are guided as per their strengths and area of interest.
He reiterated the significance of augmenting the institutional structure envisaged under this scheme so that the handholding of applicants is done to transform them into successful entrepreneurs. He directed the bank authorities to make a customised loan product to be offered under YUVA scheme.
Dulloo also enjoined upon the Deputy Commissioners to identify the quality manpower in their districts for acting as ‘YUVA Doots’ who would groom the PEs in strategising to become entrepreneurs of their choice. He sought suggestions from the participating Vice Chancellors of local Universities, Chairman J&K Bank, Director IIM Jammu, IIT, CGM NABARD in framing a better roadmap to deal with unemployment across J&K.
While speaking about this baseline survey, DG, E&S, Satveer Kour, gave out some insights about the data collected from each surveyed member. She revealed that the questionnaire was comprised of 15 household related queries, 10 individual specific questions and 42 questions posed to PEs. Besides, 37 queries were related to unregistered enterprises and 88 to registered enterprises.
She elaborated that these questions were aimed at capturing demographic details like age, employment status, sector, activity etc. It simultaneously recorded financial, market and skill details of each individual/enterprises as the case may be. Lastly, it delved into determining the challenges faced by the individuals and enterprises in starting their enterprises or challenges faced by the existing units to flourish their business.
Secretary, L&E, Kumar Rajeev Ranjan, in his presentation highlighted the methodology and outcomes of the baseline survey. He also explained the working of Mission YUVA app in creation of successful enterprises together with capacity building of these entrepreneurs.
He said that among the key pillars of this mission is formulation of scheme for creating mass awareness and institutional mechanism to support this whole process to ensure that the set objectives are accomplished in a time bound manner. He further apprised the meeting that survey dataset is organised and structured to enable data analysis as each respondent had been assigned a unique ID with metadata saved and GIS location/time stamps preserved to verify each set of data anytime later.
He divulged that a comprehensive report is going to be compiled in next 2 months and will be put in public domain for academic purpose and informed decision making by the policymakers.
Giving insights into the observations made after analysing this data, Director Employment and MD, Mission YUVA, Shahzad Alam made out that around 64.86 lakh individuals in the age group of 18-60 years were surveyed finding around 8.27 lakh potential entrepreneurs as per the operational guidelines.
Regarding dynamics of the data, he illustrated that the above number when filtered using certain criterion like age group of 18-39 years came down to 7.038 lakh and got further reduced to 5.52 lakh when filtered as per education standard of ‘Secondary & above’ and 5.13 lakh when aspirants pursuing higher education were excluded to be identified as Potential Entrepreneurs.
About the key insights made after this baseline survey, it was revealed that 16.7% of individuals in unregistered activity have reported to have avail loans less than Rs 5 lakh. The major challenge, they enumerated, in availing loans is high interest rates and collaterals.
Similarly, it was given out that 70% entrepreneurs prefer business investment and financial support in the range of Rs 2–10 lakh only. Most of them termed financial constraints (50%) a biggest hurdle in starting a business while half of the aspiring Entrepreneurs prioritise funding or loans to start their own business.
The survey also pointed out that majority (25%) of unregistered enterprises are concentrated in wholesale and retail business only. Moreover, 83% unregistered enterprises are nano enterprises with initial investment just under Rs 5 Lakh. In addition, 68% of the potential entrepreneurs are male, while 32% are females thereby highlighting gender disparity.
The survey also assessed the health of existing enterprises checking their profile, background, business characteristics, operations, investments, financial aspects, business performance over the years, profitability, market expansion along with risks and challenges they face while doing their business.
About the Mission YUVA app, the meeting was informed that the same was developed with the active support of BISAG-N. The key feature of this app is that it brings multiple services together over a single platform. The app/portal is going to assist the applicants in registering themselves, checking eligible schemes, generating project reports, getting requisite NoCs, receive counselling, connect with market, learn soft skills, create/edit AI based CV to apply for jobs, know about success stories and give their feedback either.
Additionally, they would be provided the necessary handholding by the government designated YUVA Doots, who would be responsible to assist them in going through each process right at their doorsteps. They would be given respective panchayats and list of PEs for extending real time assistance and mentorship of these people.
The most attractive feature of this scheme is the simplified loan application form with less than 25 fields to be filled over the YUVA app/portal that had to be decided within a span of 25 days by the Bank. Only cluster head of banks can reject any application.
It was informed that the JK bank would devise a mechanism for reviewing performance of branch manager who rejects more than 50% applications. Applications will reflect to Motivators/YUVA DOOT and BHD login as soon as the applicant initiates the process. They had been enabled to edit and complete the application thereby making credit accessible to each motivated applicant to start a sustainable enterprise in future.