Dimapur, July 27 (EMN): With the current Covid-19 pandemic bringing life, including trade to a standstill, the Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India (Trifed) under the ministry of Tribal Affairs is said to have been working to ease the problems of the tribal people but procuring their produce and making them available to the global market via online.
The Trifed has embarked on an all-encompassing digitisation drive to promote only tribal commerce and also map and link its village-based tribal producers and artisans to national and international markets by setting up state of art e-platforms benchmarked to international standards in order to promote tribal commerce and help the people earn livelihood during the difficult times, informed an update from the ministry of Tribal Affairs on Monday.
It stated that the federation is ‘in the process of digitising all the information related to the forest dwellers associated with the Van Dhan Yojana, village haats and their warehouses’ by identifying and mapping all tribal clusters using GIS technology.
“Due to the suddenness of the pandemic overtaking our lives and the immediate lockdown, stocks by tribal artisans worth INR 100 crore were lying unsold. In order to ensure that these stocks got sold and all the sales proceeds go to the affected tribal families, Trifed purchased more than 1 lakh items and launched an aggressive plan to market these unsold goods online (offering substantial discounts) through its Tribes India website and also other retail platforms such as Amazon, Flipkart and GeM,” the update read, adding that it has also joined hands with the Art of Living Foundation to distribute free food and ration to more than 5000 tribal artisan families.
The update went on to state that the Van Dhan Vikas Kendras or tribal start-ups have emerged as source of employment generation for tribal gatherers and forest dwellers and the home-bound tribal artisans. “Manipur and Nagaland have emerged as examples of states where these start-ups have bloomed,” it stated.
“77 Van Dhan Kendras have been established in the state of Manipur for value addition and processing of forest produces. These Van Dhan Kendras have reported sales of MFP products worth INR 49.1 lakh since September 2019!” it added.
For a comprehensive development package for tribals in generating employment, income and entrepreneurship, Trifed is also planning the convergence of the Van Dhan Yojana with Minimum Support Price (MSP) for Mechanism for Marketing of Minor Forest Produce (MFP) Scheme in the next phase of its activities. “To bring more exposure to the empaneled tribal artisans and to bring their skill sets and products to international standards, Trifed is also collaborating with renowned designers such as Ruma Devi and Rina Dhaka to train the tribal artisans,” the update read.