From Relief to Resilience: PM-SVANidhi’s Quiet Indian Revolution

The aroma of freshly brewed chai mingled with the exhaust fumes of morning traffic, a symphony of urban life that Mr. Sharma knew intimately.

For decades, his small cart, laden with steaming cups and crisp biscuits, had been a constant presence on this Delhi street corner.

His earnings, small but steady, supported his family, sent his children to school, and connected him to the bustling rhythm of the city.

Then, the pandemic hit.

The bustling streets emptied, the familiar faces vanished, and Mr. Sharma, like millions of other street vendors, found his world grinding to a halt.

His daily income, once a reliable trickle, dried up completely, leaving him adrift in an informal economy that suddenly felt more vulnerable than ever.

Yet, from this crisis emerged a quiet revolution.

India’s Prime Minister Street Vendor’s AtmaNirbhar Nidhi, or PM-SVANidhi, stepped in, not just with temporary aid, but with a vision to fundamentally transform the relationship between the state and its informal workers.

What began as an urgent relief measure during the severe COVID-19 lockdown in June 2020 (Express, 2020) has evolved into a blueprint for urban poverty alleviation and livelihood promotion, driven by financial inclusion, digital integration, and municipal support.

In short: PM-SVANidhi, launched in June 2020, has transformed from a COVID-19 relief measure for street vendors into a social innovation integrating financial, digital, and municipal governance, offering lessons for urban poverty and livelihood promotion.

The Context: The Pandemic’s Impact on India’s Street Vendors

The story of Mr. Sharma mirrors that of millions across India, highlighting the immense yet precarious backbone of the country’s urban informal economy.

Street vendors are not merely providers of affordable goods and services; they are a vital source of low-paying, steady livelihoods for migrants and the urban poor.

Their enterprises, often far greener than brick-and-mortar shops, are the original green businesses, sustaining city life with minimal environmental impact.

The pandemic, however, exposed their profound vulnerability.

A WIEGO study in Delhi found that most street vendors could not work in April 2020, suffering a staggering earnings drop of nearly 90 percent (WIEGO, 2020; Express, 2020).

This dramatic impact underscored the urgent need for robust social safety nets and accessible financial mechanisms.

Many vendors operated without formal recognition, excluding them from traditional banking services and government relief measures.

Their informal status, while allowing agility, also left them exposed to shocks, making them invisible to existing support systems during the lockdowns (Express).

From Crisis Response to Policy Shift: The Evolution of PM-SVANidhi

In response to this crisis, the government took an unusual step.

Instead of one-time relief grants, it launched PM-SVANidhi to rebuild livelihoods through collateral-free microcredit of Rs 10,000 as working capital for street vendors (Express).

This marked a fundamental policy shift, reimagining vendors not as welfare recipients but as micro-entrepreneurs.

Subsequent tranches of loans rewarded timely repayment, with interest subsidies and digital cashback incentives making the microcredit nearly zero interest.

This innovative approach aimed not just to offer a temporary lifeline but to nudge vendors into formal finance and a more recognized status within urban planning.

As PM-SVANidhi evolved, it integrated credit, digital payments, and municipal engagement.

This transformed relief into lasting recognition and economic stability for a dynamic sector.

As of October 2025, the scheme has disbursed over 9.7 million loans, totaling more than 14,000 crore Rs.

Critically, nearly 4.7 million vendors are now digitally active, leveraging UPI for their daily transactions (Express, 2025).

This scale demonstrates a genuine shift towards empowering these street vendors.

The Social-Policy Innovations of the Scheme

PM-SVANidhi stands out as one of India’s most quietly transformative policy innovations, turning a crisis into an opportunity to redesign the state’s relationship with the informal economy.

Its core strength lies in several key social-policy innovations.

A simple yet powerful early innovation was the Letter of Recommendation (LoR), which enabled unregistered vendors to be formally recognized by local bodies.

This brought them into the fold of formal finance and validated their economic contribution.

The scheme’s decentralized design, implemented through Urban Local Bodies (ULBs), ensured flexibility and local ownership.

This replaced a top-down rollout with participatory governance, allowing for tailored support.

Equally significant was PM-SVANidhi’s use of behavioral incentives rather than compulsion.

Instead of mandating digital adoption, the scheme used cashback rewards and better credit terms to nudge vendors toward digital transactions.

For the first time, millions of vendors developed digital and financial footprints, forming an invaluable inclusion infrastructure for future welfare programs.

Another distinguishing feature is the policy’s agility.

Later into the implementation, PM-SVANidhi evolved from a credit scheme into a broader platform for social security of workers.

Under ‘SVANidhi se Samriddhi’, the initiative began linking vendors and even their families to various welfare benefits, broadening the scheme’s overall impact.

This public engagement, along with the scheme’s upgrades, also lent legitimacy and dignity to a community long stigmatized as encroachers, successfully reframing them as essential urban entrepreneurs.

Together, these elements—integration, decentralization, behavioral design, and adaptability—make PM-SVANidhi a landmark in social innovation within governance.

The Future Lessons and Possibilities for Policy Innovation

As PM-SVANidhi enters its next phase, the challenge is to move from credit to ‘credit plus,’ further supporting street vendors for long-term economic resilience.

Several lessons and possibilities emerge for policy innovation.

Many vendors remain excluded as they are not registered with ULBs, especially marginalized and women vendors.

Simplifying registration, incentivizing women’s enrolment, and partnering with local federations must be priorities.

A dedicated sub-component within PM-SVANidhi could focus on women vendors, enhancing credit access, inclusion, and social protection through Self-Help Group (SHG) linkages and training for economic empowerment and leadership (Express).

Credit must also be accompanied by financial literacy training.

PM-SVANidhi must safeguard against over-indebtedness, ensure flexible repayment schedules, establish emergency funds, and protect vendors from unintended harms such as IT notices or CIBIL downgrades.

The scheme also holds potential for collective and cooperative models, where vendors could pool larger loans for shared assets like vending zones, amenities such as cold storage, or logistics facilities, multiplying their impact (Express).

Furthermore, PM-SVANidhi should guide the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) in planning vending zones and infrastructure, as street vending remains insecure without them.

Formalization of vending zones must be incentivized at the city level, and financial inclusion matched with institutional protection and vendor-led grievance systems.

The scheme can also leverage its platform to facilitate implementation of the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014, by training and capacitating Town Vending Committees (TVCs) to play a stronger role (Express).

Finally, as climate change increasingly disrupts urban livelihoods, PM-SVANidhi must evolve to address climate distress with financial implications.

Heatwaves, heavy rains, and extreme weather threaten vendors.

Integrating adaptation measures through co-financing climate resilient infrastructure such as shade, water and sanitation, safety nets such as heat insurance and emergency support, as well as promoting zero-carbon practices, can make the scheme a hallmark of urban climate resilience (Express).

Navigating Tomorrow: Risks, Trade-offs, and Ethics

While PM-SVANidhi’s impact is significant, the path to full informal economy transformation is complex, fraught with inherent risks and ethical considerations.

The continued exclusion of many vendors, particularly marginalized and women vendors not registered with Urban Local Bodies (ULBs), represents a significant risk.

If access barriers persist, the scheme’s full potential for widespread livelihood promotion and social security remains unrealized.

Another trade-off lies in balancing rapid credit disbursement with safeguards against over-indebtedness.

While microcredit offers immediate relief, without accompanying financial literacy and flexible repayment options, it could inadvertently create new vulnerabilities for vendors (Express).

The push for digital inclusion, while transformative, must also address the digital divide and ensure that technology truly empowers, rather than alienates, those with limited digital access or skills.

Ethically, the scheme confronts questions of recognition and dignity.

While it has reframed vendors as entrepreneurs, the challenge remains to institutionalize this respect fully, moving beyond programmatic interventions to systemic changes that protect their rights and livelihoods.

The threat of IT notices or CIBIL downgrades for vendors entering formal finance highlights the delicate balance between formalization and protection from unintended bureaucratic harms (Express).

Ensuring vendor-led grievance systems is crucial for maintaining trust and accountability.

Building Sustained Impact: Tools, Metrics, and Cadence

To ensure PM-SVANidhi’s continued success and evolution, a clear framework of recommended tools, metrics, and review cadence is essential.

Effective monitoring of financial inclusion and digital adoption could be supported by platforms that track loan disbursement rates, repayment regularity, and UPI transaction volumes.

These tools should provide real-time data to Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) for localized insights.

For the scheme’s continued evolution, key performance indicators could focus on the percentage of unregistered vendors newly brought into the formal financial system, especially women, and the average increase in digital transaction frequency per vendor.

Other important metrics include the repayment rate for subsequent loan tranches, indicating sustained business viability, the number of vendors linked to broader social security and welfare benefits through ‘SVANidhi se Samriddhi’, and the adoption rate of climate-resilient practices or infrastructure among vendors.

A structured review cadence is vital, encompassing monthly performance reviews by Urban Local Bodies to identify local challenges and successes.

Quarterly policy review meetings involving MoHUA, banks, and vendor federations could assess overall scheme progress and gather feedback.

Annual impact assessments focusing on livelihood promotion, poverty reduction, and digital financial literacy among vendors would ensure continuous learning and adaptation, a hallmark of effective policy innovation.

FAQ: Your Questions on PM-SVANidhi’s Vision Answered

Q: What is PM-SVANidhi and when was it launched?

A: PM-SVANidhi, the Prime Minister Street Vendor’s AtmaNirbhar Nidhi, was launched in June 2020 as an immediate relief measure for street vendors during the COVID-19 lockdown (Express, 2020).

Q: How has PM-SVANidhi evolved beyond initial relief?

A: It evolved from providing collateral-free microcredit into a social innovation integrating financial, digital payments, and municipal engagement, reimagining vendors as micro-entrepreneurs and broadening their social security (Express).

Q: What are some key successes of PM-SVANidhi?

A: As of October 2025, over 9.7 million loans worth 14,000 crore Rs have been disbursed, and nearly 4.7 million vendors are digitally active using UPI for daily transactions (Express, 2025).

Q: What are the future challenges and opportunities for PM-SVANidhi?

A: Future challenges include integrating more unregistered vendors, focusing on women’s empowerment, providing financial literacy, ensuring flexible repayment, planning vending zones, and addressing climate resilience for vendors (Express).

Q: Can PM-SVANidhi’s model be replicated for other informal sectors?

A: Yes, its lessons offer a replicable model for other informal sectors like waste pickers, domestic workers, and delivery workers, highlighting the importance of credit, support, and recognition for inclusive urbanization (Express).

Conclusion: A Model for Resilient, Inclusive Urban Futures

As the evening light mellows and Mr. Sharma counts his digital earnings, the subtle chime of a UPI payment replacing the rustle of cash, we see PM-SVANidhi’s true impact.

It is not in grand inaugurations or new infrastructure, but in the quiet dignity restored to millions of street vendors.

It lies in the resilience built within the informal economy, and in the promise of a more inclusive urban future.

The scheme demonstrates a powerful vision: seeing informality not as a problem to eliminate, but as a system to strengthen.

The lessons from PM-SVANidhi extend far beyond street vending, offering a replicable model for other informal sectors—waste pickers, domestic workers, delivery workers—where credit, support, and recognition are most needed.

As India navigates the complexities of urban development and faces climate and livelihood challenges, this model points towards a path where finance, recognition, and infrastructure become the missing links in a truly inclusive urbanization.

Let us learn from this quiet success, fostering policies that build a more resilient, equitable, and dignified future for all.

Glossary

• Urban Local Bodies (ULBs): Local government bodies responsible for the administration of urban areas in India.
• UPI: Unified Payments Interface, an instant real-time payment system developed by National Payments Corporation of India.

References

• Express, “From relief to reform to resilience: PM-SVANidhi’s quiet success story and future lessons for policy innovation”, n.d.
• WIEGO, “A WIEGO study in Delhi”, 2020-04-01.