The Union cabinet on Tuesday approved the ₹1-trillion employment-linked incentives (ELI)scheme, ₹1-trillion research, development, and innovation (RDI) scheme, and the National Sports Policy 2025, among other decisions.
The ELI scheme, aimed at generating 35 million new jobs in two years, will provide direct financial benefits up to ₹15,000 to 19.2 million first-time employees, said Union minister of information and broadcasting Ashwini Vaishnaw in a briefing in New Delhi.
First-time employees are those who register with the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) for the first time. Employees with salaries up to ₹1 lakh will be eligible.
Vaishnaw added that the scheme would also incentivise employers to generate more jobs.
According to a Cabinet press note, every workplace with a manpower under 50 will be required to add two more employees for at least six months, while a workplace with over 50 people will be required to hire five.
Financial benefits to employers should lead to the creation of additional employment for nearly 26 million persons.
The ELI benefits would be applicable to jobs created between 1 August 2025 and 31 July 2027.
“The target is to create jobs across the country for freshers, with a special focus on the manufacturing sector,” said Vaishnaw.
Manufacturing sector companies will receive these incentives for another two years, the Cabinet press statement said.
For an additional employee with an EPF base wage of up to ₹10,000, the employer will receive up to ₹1,000 proportionately. For an additional employee with an EPF base wage between ₹10,000 and ₹20,000, the employer will receive ₹2000. Similarly, for an additional employee with an EPF base wage of over ₹20,000 but under ₹1 lakh, an employer will get ₹3,000 as incentives.
The scheme was announced in the Union Budget 2024-25 as part of the Prime Minister’s package of five schemes to facilitate employment, skilling and other opportunities for 41 million youth with a total budget outlay of ₹2 trillion, the statement said.
The industry welcomed the ELI scheme. “By incentivizing first-time workers, boosting manufacturing, and encouraging employer participation, it reflects smart, inclusive policymaking. Its emphasis on dignity, security, and formalization aligns deeply with industry aspirations, said Anish Shah, immediate past president, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (Ficci).
The RDI scheme
With a focus on bridging the gap in capital-intensive research and development, the RDI scheme will encourage research in sunrise sectors as well as domains relevant for economic security, strategic purpose, and self-reliance, said another Cabinet press note.
The key purpose of the scheme is to provide long-term financing or refinancing with long tenors at low or nil interest rates to spur private sector investment in RDI.
This comes at a time when India’s gross expenditure on R&D has doubled from ₹60,196 crore in 2010-11 to ₹127,380 crore in 2020-21. But, the share of expenditure on R&D as a part of the country’s total economic output has consistently fallen from about 0.83% in 2009-10 to 0.64% in 2020-21.
The scheme will also acquire technologies of high strategic importance and create a fund of funds to be disbursed for deep-tech initiatives.
It will include financing of transformative projects at higher levels of Technology Readiness Levels (TRL), the statement said.
The scheme, and its ₹ ₹1-trillion outlay, will be governed broadly by the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“The RDI scheme will have a two-tiered funding mechanism. At the first level, there will be a special purpose fund (SPF) established within the ANRF, which will act as the custodian of funds. From the SPF funds shall be allocated to a variety of second-level fund managers. This will be mainly in the form of long-term concessional loans,” the statement added.
National Sports Policy 2025
Vaishnaw said the new sports policy is aimed at elevating India to the top five rankings of all sporting nations. The policy will focus on scouting and nurturing talent, attracting international sports events to India, promoting sports manufacturing, and making sports a key part of the national education policy.
“There will also be leagues for different sports created under the policy, to make Indian sportspersons competitive,” said Vaishnaw.
It will establish a regulatory framework for sports governance and finance the sector through public-private partnerships and corporate social responsibility funds. It will also be a model for states to implement, encouraging them to revise or formulate their own policies in alignment with national objectives.
Other decisions
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) also cleared the construction of a four-lane 46.7-kilometre Paramakudi-Ramanathapuram highway in Tamil Nadu.
The project will be constructed in a hybrid annuity mode (HAM) at a total capital cost of ₹1,853 crore.
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The project seeks to decongest traffic on the two-lane national highway 87 between Madurai, Paramakudi, Ramanathapuram, Mandapam, Rameshwaram, and Dhanushkodi.
“The project alignment integrates with five major national highways (NH-38, NH-85, NH-36, NH-536, and NH-32) and 3 state highways (SH-47, SH-29, SH-34), providing seamless connectivity to key economic, social, and logistics nodes across southern Tamil Nadu,” said another cabinet press note.
employment-linked incentives, National Sports Policy 2025, research development and innovation scheme, financial benefits to employers, ELI scheme, RDI scheme, job creation, new jobs, EPFO
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