In which of the following years was the 'Prime Minister's Employment…

Concept

A credit-linked subsidy scheme does not hand cash to an entrepreneur. The project cost is split three ways — the beneficiary's own prescribed contribution, bank finance (a term loan plus working capital), and a government "margin money" subsidy that is released to the financing bank rather than to the applicant. The bank therefore appraises and funds the unit, while the subsidy is held as a locked term deposit and adjusted against the loan account only after the lock-in period of satisfactory working, so it lowers the eventual repayment burden and not the entry contribution. When two such self-employment programmes run in parallel and overlap in purpose, the standard administrative response is to merge them into one scheme with a single nodal agency, one subsidy pattern and one application window; the year of that merger becomes the new scheme's launch year.

Applying it here

The Prime Minister's Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP) is exactly such a merger. On 15 August 2008 the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises brought the Prime Minister's Rozgar Yojana (PMRY, 1993) and the Rural Employment Generation Programme (REGP, 1995) together into one credit-linked margin-money subsidy scheme for setting up micro-enterprises in the non-farm sector. The Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) is the single national nodal agency, and field implementation runs through KVIC directorates, State Khadi and Village Industries Boards (KVIBs) and District Industries Centres (DICs). The launch year is therefore 2008.

Cross-check: what each year marks

Of these four years only 2008 carries a scheme-launch event for PMEGP; the other three mark plan periods or a separate wage-employment law. Hence the year of launch is 2008.