PM Vishwakarma scheme: only 4.2% of sanctioned funds disbursed in eastern UP after 18 months
Despite 2.3 lakh artisans enrolled across six districts, less than ₹48 crore of the sanctioned ₹1,140 crore has actually reached beneficiaries. A ground report.
Eighteen months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the PM Vishwakarma scheme with the promise of transforming the lives of India’s traditional craftspeople and artisans, a ground survey across six districts of eastern Uttar Pradesh reveals a gap between the scheme’s ambitions and its execution that officials are struggling to explain.
Across Varanasi, Azamgarh, Gorakhpur, Deoria, Basti, and Mirzapur — districts with historically high concentrations of weavers, carpenters, potters, and blacksmiths — 2.3 lakh artisans have been enrolled in the scheme and 1.12 lakh have been officially sanctioned benefits. But only 9,423 have received any disbursement at all. The total amount disbursed — ₹47.8 crore — represents 4.2% of the ₹1,140 crore sanctioned for these districts alone.
The scheme, launched in September 2023, offers artisans in 18 traditional trades access to collateral-free loans of up to ₹3 lakh, skill training stipends, modern toolkits worth ₹15,000, and digital payment infrastructure. On paper, it is one of the most comprehensive artisan support schemes India has ever attempted.
On the ground, the bottleneck appears to be at the block-level implementation stage. District officials point to incomplete documentation from artisans — many of whom do not have formal proof of their trade — as the primary cause of delay. Artisans and NGOs working with them point to a different problem: bank branches in rural areas are refusing to process the loans, citing unclear guidelines from the Ministry of MSME about risk categorisation.
