Employment & Entrepreneurship
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This category is the government's answer to "where will the jobs come from" — a policy triad of easing business creation (Start-Up India), boosting domestic manufacturing (Make in India, PLI schemes), and directly subsidising employment generation (PMEGP). It spans multiple ministries: DPIIT (Commerce & Industry) for Start-Up India and Make in India; MSME for PMEGP; and individual line ministries (Electronics & IT, Textiles, Pharmaceuticals, Automobiles, and others) for their respective PLI schemes.
| Scheme | Year | Ministry | One-liner objective |
|---|---|---|---|
| Make in India | 2014 | Commerce & Industry (DPIIT) | Boost domestic manufacturing, FDI, and ease of doing business across 27 sectors |
| Prime Minister's Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP) | 2008 | MSME | Credit-linked subsidy for setting up new micro-enterprises to generate self-employment |
| Start-Up India | 2016 | Commerce & Industry (DPIIT) | Tax benefits, easier compliance, and funding support to foster a startup ecosystem |
| Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Schemes | 2020 onward | Multiple (sector-specific) | Cash incentives tied to incremental production/sales to boost domestic manufacturing and exports |
| Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan | 2020 | Finance (umbrella, multi-ministry) | Broad self-reliance push across manufacturing, MSMEs, agriculture, and infrastructure (COVID-19 response) |
| National Career Service (NCS) | 2015 | Labour & Employment | Online job-matching and career counselling platform |
| Rozgar Mela | 2022 | Multiple (PM's Office coordinated) | Mass recruitment drives distributing appointment letters for government vacancies |
Make in India, launched in September 2014, was less a single scheme than a coordinated branding-and-reform push across 27 identified sectors (from automobiles to defence manufacturing to renewable energy), paired with ease-of-doing-business reforms — India's World Bank Ease of Doing Business ranking improvement from 142nd (2014) to 63rd (2019, the last year the index was published) is the statistic most often cited alongside it. Start-Up India, launched 16 January 2016, created the formal "recognised startup" category (DPIIT recognition) that unlocks tax holidays, self-certification for labour/environment law compliance, and easier patent filing — distinct from Make in India's manufacturing focus, Start-Up India is sector-agnostic and targets the process of starting any innovative business.
PLI Schemes began with mobile manufacturing and electronics in 2020 and have since expanded to roughly 14 sectors (including pharmaceuticals, textiles, automobiles/auto components, specialty steel, telecom, food processing, and solar PV modules) — each sector-specific scheme pays a percentage-based incentive on incremental sales of goods manufactured in India over a base year, over a fixed window (typically five years), run by that sector's own line ministry rather than one central nodal ministry, which is exactly why "which ministry runs the PLI for X" is a recurring — and recurringly tricky — question type.
Memory hook — "Make, Start, Produce": Make in India (2014, manufacture broadly) → Start-Up India (2016, start any business) → PLI (2020 onward, produce more of a specific good for a specific incentive) — three different verbs, three different tools, roughly chronological.
Practice Recall: Before reading on, name the launch year of Make in India and of Start-Up India, and explain in one sentence how their objectives differ.
Answer: Make in India (2014) targets manufacturing/FDI across specific identified sectors; Start-Up India (2016) targets easing the process of founding any innovative new business, regardless of sector.