Only 0.01 per cent of street vendors belonging to minority communities across 75 cities have benefitted from the Union Ministry’s PM SVANidhi scheme between June 2020 and May 2022, according to a Right To Information (RTI) query by Venkatesh Nayak, a member of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.
A total of 48.70 lakh (4.87 million) applications had been received for the first and second loans across the country since the inception of the scheme, the data supplied by MoHUA’s Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) revealed.
Only 607 applicants, a meagre 0.012 per cent were submitted by street vendors belonging to the minority communities. It is abysmally lower than the 3.35% figure reported for the Scheduled Tribes category.
While 529 applications were submitted for first loan by street vendors belonging to minority communities, only 77 were submitted for the 2nd loan.
In the PMSVANidhi loan application form, street vendor applicants must indicate if they belong to the “Minority” community. Although the form does not specify the names of these communities, the Centre has identified five religious communities as ‘minorities’, namely, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Zoroastrians (Parsis).
The data also revealed that a total of 32.26 lakh loans were disbursed under the PM SVANidhi scheme during this period. Only 331 of these beneficiaries, 0.0102 per cent
are street vendors belonging to the minority communities, much worse than those belonging to the ST category which accounts for 3.15% of the beneficiaries.
Maharashtra reported the highest number (162) of minority community beneficiaries, followed by Delhi (110), Telangana (22), Gujarat (12) and Odisha (8), as per the RTI query.
Uttar Pradesh reported the highest success rate of 100 per cent with all the 12 applicants securing the 1st loan, flowed by Delhi (77.46%), Telangana (66.67%) and Gujarat (63.16%). However, in Maharashtra, despite reporting the largest number of applications for the first and second loans, the success rate in the state was only 56.45%.
While 308 first loans were disbursed to street vendors belonging to minority communities across the country, only 23-second loans were disbursed to them, according to data by MoHUA’s CPIO.
The Centre implemented the PM SVANidhi scheme for street vendors in June 2020 to facilitate them resume their businesses in urban areas. It helps collateral-free working capital loans up to Rs 10,000 for tenure up to one-year. The vendors also become eligible for the next cycle of loans with a higher limit if they repay the loans on time.
Further, a total of 48,618, that is 0.92 per cent of these were submitted by street vendors belonging to the category of persons with disabilities (PwD).
Tamil Nadu had the highest number of first loan applications (8,631) in the PwD category, followed by Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka.
Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh recorded the highest number (7,278) of the loans disbursed to those in the PwD category for first and second loans.
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Rabia Shireen is a Staff Reporter at The Cognate.
