Following the success of the Village and Digital connect initiative during which TRIFED’s regional officials across the country went to identified villages with a significant tribal population and supervised the implementation of the various programmes and initiatives earlier in 2021, TRIFED under Ministry of Tribal Affairs has now launched “Sankalp se Siddhi” – Village & Digital Connect Drive. Starting from April 1, 2021, this 100 day drive will entail 150 teams (10 in each region from TRIFED and State Implementation Agencies/Mentoring Agencies/Partners) visiting ten villages each. 100 villages in each region and 1500 villages in the country will be covered in the next 100 days. The main aim of this drive is to activate the Van Dhan Vikas Kendras in these villages.
Among all of TRIFED’s initiatives that have been put in place to help the disadvantaged tribal sections of the society, the Scheme, Mechanism for Marketing of Minor Forest Produce (MFP) Through Minimum Support Price (MSP) & Development of Value Chain for MFP’ that provides MSP to gatherers of forest produce and introduces value addition and marketing through tribal groups and clusters and Van Dhan Vikas Kendras has found widespread acceptance across the country. Especially during the pandemic in 2020, this scheme has emerged as a panacea for the tribals.
The objective of the MSP for MFP scheme is to establish a framework for ensuring fair prices for the tribal gatherers, primary processing, storage, transportation etc. while ensuring sustainability of the resource base addressing the problems tribals are facing such as perishable nature of the produce, lack of holding capacity, lack of marketing infrastructure, exploitation by middle men, and timely government intervention. Rs 200 crore Sales during the next 12 months is targeted as a result of this initiative once the VDVKs are activated in these 1500 villages. The visiting teams will also identify locations and shortlist potential VDVKs for clustering as TRIFOOD, and SFURTI units as larger enterprises. They will also identify tribal artisans and other groups and empanel them as suppliers so that they can have access to larger markets through the Tribes India network – both physical outlets and TribesIndia.com.
It is expected that Sankalp Se Siddhi will aid in effecting a complete transformation of the tribal ecosystem across the country.
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NB/SK/Trifed/04.04.2021
