
Nai Roshni is a scheme operated by the government of India through the ministry of minority affairs for the empowerment and leadership development of minority women. Started in the year 2012, it provides training in health, education, financial literacy, and legal rights aiming to build self-confidence and self-reliance among participants for the upliftment of their socio-economic status.
About the Nai Roshni
- Nai Roshni is a flagship scheme launched in 2012 by the Ministry of Minority Affairs, Government of India for empowerment of minority women through leadership and life skills enhancement.
- This is aimed at developing confidence in the women’s life, self-reliance, and active participation in social, economic, and community activities.
- The scheme conducts training programs related to various topics like health, hygiene issues, financial literacy, education, digital skills, women’s rights, and legal awareness.
- Nai Roshni mainly targets economically weaker women from notified minority communities to be change agents within their families and communities.
- Training comes through various NGOs, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), and other institutions at the grassroots level to reach remote areas.
- Thus, the program also improves the quality of life concerning social and developmental issues in the lives of the minority women to bring all of them under the umbrella of inclusion and national growth.

Features of Nai Roshni
The Nai Roshni scheme aims to empower minority women with a leadership development and skills-building agenda. Major characteristics include:
- Target Group: Focuses on minority women from extremely poor families, 18-65 years of age.
- Training Areas: Topics include health and hygiene, financial literacy, digital skills, legal rights, women empowerment, and education.
- Implementation: NGOs/CSOs and other grassroots organizations to achieve effective outreach.
- Community Leadership: Leadership skills shall be developed for women to be change agents within the family and the community.
- Inclusiveness: It involves bringing in such women from interiors and backward areas whose interventions would provide for socio-economic development of grassroots.
- Duration: Training programs are usually organized for six days, depending on the module.
- Capacity Building: To help minority women solve particular community problems, access government schemes, and take leadership roles in decision-making processes.
The program, thus, gives women the skills and confidence to improve their community’s living standards.
Objectives of Nai Roshni
The program Nai Roshni aims at empowering minority women and raising their socio-economic status through enhancing their leadership abilities and instilling self-reliance. The scheme has the following purposes:
- Awareness Generation: To enlighten women regarding health, hygiene, financial management, legal rights, and various government welfare schemes.
- Leadership Development: To enable women to become active leaders and change agents in their families and societies.
- Socio-Economic Participation: To increase women’s participation in the economic sphere, education, and community decision-making.
- Confidence Building: To build self-confidence in women to face the social and economic challenges.
- Facilitating Inclusion: To bring minority women into the national mainstream development process for holistic development.
In essence, Nai Roshni, through organized training and capacity-building programs, creates a nurturing environment for minority women to bloom and contribute significantly to society.
Significance of Nai Roshni
The Nai Roshni scheme is fundamentally important in the empowerment of minority women and inclusive development. The following are its vital significances:
- Women Empowerment: They give minority women the knowledge, skills, and confidence to become independent and assertive members of society, be it in their personal or professional lives.
- Social Inclusion: The scheme ensures minorities’ social integration by addressing the socio-economic challenges faced by women.
- Leadership Development: The program provides women with leadership skills as change agents who will inspire others and contribute to building the community.
- Enhanced Awareness: By imparting training for financial literacy, health, legal rights, and digital skills, women are enabled to make informed decisions for themselves and their families.
- Community Development: Empowered women help improve their families and communities, which in turn creates the ripple effect of positive change.
- National Muse: By boosting the socio-economic participation of minority women, this scheme increases their role in the country’s overall development and progress.
Lacunae of Nai Roshni
Despite its merit and much-promising progress, however, Nai Roshni has a few inherent drawbacks which have the potential to undermine its effectiveness. Such key areas of concern include:
- Limited Reach: The context in which the scheme gets implemented is often restricted to particular regions, leaving a large number of eligible minority women in remote, underserved areas unaware or unreached.
- Poor Follow-Up: The tracing measure in the scheme is inadequate to track the years of progress of women after training limits the sustainable outcomes.
- Dependence on NGOs: A substantial dependence on CSOs and NGOs for delivering the scheme sometimes causes variations in quality and reach of training programs.
- Insufficient Budget Allocation: Limited financial resources restrict the scaling and extension of the scheme to cover a large population.
- Low Awareness: A campaign with little reach in effective awareness ends with fewer women from minority communities joining the program.
Mitigating these gaps might improve the efficiency of the scheme and increase its potential in empowering minority women.
Key Pointers on Nai Roshni for UPSC CSE Prelims
- Nai Roshni: A Leadership Development Program for Minority Women.
- Foundation: Incepted in 2012 by the Ministry of Minority Affairs, Government of India.
- Aim: To empower minority women through leadership development, self-reliance, and socio-economic engagement.
- Beneficiaries: Minority women in economically weaker sections of society, aged 18-65 years.
- Training Modules: Health and hygiene, financial literacy, digital literacy, women’s rights, legal awareness, and much more.
- Implementation: Through NGOs, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), and institutions at grass-roots level.
- Duration: The entire training program usually lasts for 6 days.
- Focus Areas: Empowerment, social inclusion, and capacity building for leadership roles for women within families and the community.
- Significance: Enable minority women to become agents of change within their communities and contribute to national development.
- Challenges: The program suffers from poor outreach, inadequate monitoring, and low awareness among eligible beneficiaries.
Way Forward
Nai Roshni must be further strengthened in outreach to remote places, with better monitoring of its activities and sustained follow-up with beneficiaries. An increased budget allocation is proposed, along with an increase in participation for effective implementation, which will include awareness campaigns targeting vulnerable populations. Digital platforms can also be used to further propagate the scheme, thus increasing its outreach and impact.
Conclusion
Nai Roshni is a remarkable endeavour aimed at equipping minority women with the knowledge, confidence, and leadership skills necessary to improve their socio-economic status. With a firm belief in the transformative power of inclusive self-reliance, Nai Roshni creates an environment where the upliftment of these women becomes a positive marketing force in their families and communities, thus contributing significantly to the nation in terms of development and social justice.